General Discussion

and in addition, my students picked a name of a classmate out of a hat days in advance. They then wrote a "friendly letter" (in the friendly letter format, which is a "thing" in elementary school) to their secret Valentine, with the topic sentence being what they liked about the person. On Valentine's Day each student read the letter out loud without revealing the recipient's name, and other students listened to the description and guessed who it was. It was hilarious and fun. At the end, students gave the letter to their "secret Valentine", and since it was full of compliments and fun memories, they loved it. Many parents and students told me that they kept the letters for years!