Valentine’s Day is almost here! I posted some ideas for Valentine’s Day back in 2017, but I wanted to post about some new ideas I have for this year.

In my classes, I’m planning to use this Romantic World Records activity. It’s a group guessing game I created using information from the Guinness Book of World Records, all related to love and romance. Some of the facts should be pretty interesting to students…like that the longest continuous kiss ever recorded was over 58 hours long!

If you want to tell your students a romantic story for Valentine’s Day, I recommend “The Lovers of Teruel,” a legend from Spain. It’s a tragic love story, similar to Romeo and Juliet. I’ve told the story to several classes, and almost all of my students really like it–though it is very sad! I first heard the story on Pablo Roman’s Dreaming Spanish channel, and I posted an English version on the Stories First website. There are some historians who believe that the story is true, and you can even show your students a picture of the alleged tombs of the lovers.

For my higher-level students, I’m planning to use the video “Two by Two” from the StoryCorps website. It’s the true story of two sets of identical twins who married each other. I’ll probably have my students watch the video once, then we’ll read the transcript together and discuss it, and then I’ll have them watch the video again.

Happy Valentine’s Day!