When the Christmas season approaches and visions of sugar plums and Xboxes dance in students' heads, it can be hard to keep children focused on schoolwork. In your English course, give students Christmas writing assignments---it's what they're thinking about anyway. An "All I Want for Christmas" theme can be incorporated into the lesson plans for any grade or ability level, so you can get what you want for Christmas: to improve students' writing skills.

Tailoring the Assignment to Your Students
A brief letter to Santa might be challenging enough for young students, but try thinking outside the box and assigning students to write about what they would like other people to receive or to narrow their lists to just a single item. Older students can write much longer pieces; require them to provide written support for their points, explain their reasoning or write it as a formal business letter. Remember that some students do not celebrate Christmas and will need an alternative assignment.

Poems and Songs to Santa
Ask students to create a list of things they would like for Christmas. Have them write a poem to Santa requesting these items, using a certain rhyme scheme or meter you have studied. Young children can sing the song "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" and fill in the words with something from their list. Discuss the concept of syllables and ask them to make up replacement lyrics for the song that have three syllables such as "princess dress," "cute stuffed dog" or "racing car."

Why I Belong on the Nice List
In the spirit of debate, have students choose the thing they would most like for Christmas and write a letter to Santa explaining how they have earned the item. Students should defend any actions that may have gotten them on the "naughty" list and highlight activities that categorize them as "nice." Ask each student to imagine he is at a trial where he must prove to a jury why he belongs on Santa's "nice" list and why the particular item he chose should be the reward for his behavior.

Christmas MadLibs
MadLibs can be an effective way of focusing students on parts of speech and descriptive writing. Write a short piece about "All I Want for Christmas" and remove many of the nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs, so that students can fill in the blanks. Give them a list of required parts of speech, rather than the worksheet, so they don't read the story first. Alternatively, ask students to write their own paragraphs about what they would like for Christmas and then have them turn their own writings into MadLibs.