Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November each year. The run-up to the Thanksgiving break is a great opportunity to celebrate and learn about this holiday with your class, and it can be so much fun. The main goal of teaching about Thanksgiving should be to help students develop an understanding of the history of the holiday and reinforce the important social-emotional concepts of gratitude, thankfulness, and empathy. 

Whether you’re teaching tots or teenagers, celebrate your best Thanksgiving lesson ever by teaching an accurate history of the holiday. 

Educators have an ethical obligation to teach accurately about Thanksgiving. Here are some online resources that can help. 

Throughout history, people have given thanks – sometimes in joyful celebration, often in solemn, even prayerful, ceremony. The United States, over hundreds of years, has come to observe a national holiday for giving thanks, one that has taken many forms and has been observed in different ways Thanksgiving, 1919 

In partnership with the Center for Racial Justice in Education comes this compiled list of racially sensitive Thanksgiving resources for classrooms.