Your kiddos will love learning about other cultures with this easy, no prep Winter Holidays Around the World craft. With differentiated nonfiction reading passages, writing organizers, and a poetry pocketbook, this is a great way to teach about winter holidays around the world, including Christmas, Hanukkah, Chinese New Year, Kwanzaa, Diwali, and Three Kings Day.
Students begin by reading and researching each holiday using the included passages and kid-friendly weblinks. They track their notes in the included note-taking pages. These notes then become the foundation of a poetry writing project, where students learn about several types of poems and use them to share the traditions and customs of the winter holidays.
Each poetry format comes with a short, step-by-step guide to help students get writing, a drafting page, and two final project templates - either a poetry pocket or a tabbed mini-book.
The no-prep structure of this product lends itself to many possible teaching frameworks. Teachers can have students do all the research first and teach the poems in succession, or they can break down the holidays one at a time. This would allow students to take notes on a holiday and learn the poem types one at a time before moving on to the next holiday and poem.
Your download includes:
✔ 12 differentiated nonfiction passages - 2 levels per holiday
✔ Holiday note-taking pages and planning guides
✔ Poetry planning pages with graphic organizers, models, and information on each type of poetry
✔ Templates for Holiday Poetry Projects - choice of tabbed mini-books or poetry pockets
✔ Instructional guide w/ student objectives, directions, and models
✔ Multimedia resources - links for videos, websites, and more for each holiday
In this Winter Holidays Language Arts Resource you'll find:
1) Engaging passages and multi-media learning activities to teach students about six commonly celebrated winter holidays
- Articles included for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Lunar New Year, & Three Kings Day
- Differentiated options - 2 levels per holiday
- Options for videos and links for websites to learn and gather information about each holiday
- Notetaking pages to record learning for use in the writing portion of the project.
2) Fun poetry lessons and activities to teach about six different types of poetry commonly introduced in elementary school
- Instructional notes, models, and writing guides to help students create a cinquain, diamante, acrostic, tanka, haiku, and shape poem
- Displayable templates for sharing the final project
- Opportunity for students to share about winter holidays through a unique format
3) Teacher support materials
- Lesson overview with student objective & step-by-step instructions
- Quick start materials list & easy (optional) prep steps
- Links to multimedia resources to expand the research into a WebQuest format
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How to use this Winter Holidays Around the World resource
- Cross-curricular reading and writing project leading up to the December break
- Homeschool unit on winter holidays & celebrations
- Enrichment project for early finishers
- Centers or stations for December
Students will write six poems including:
- Christmas - cinquain
- Kwanzaa - diamante
- Hanukkah - acrostic
- Diwali - tanka
- Lunar (Chinese) New Year - haiku
- Three Kings Day - shape poem
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Here's what teachers & homeschool families have to say about this resource:
★ This is a wonderful resource to use to teach about different holidays around the world as well as poetry. My students loved the activities! - Keary Z.
★ This was GREAT! My students loved learning about different holidays and their poems turned out fantastic! - Julie M.
★ This was a great way to tie in my poetry unit with reading and the holidays. The kids enjoyed it and it was a great creative way to make it to winter break! - Heather P.
★ Very detailed and well done. My students enjoyed learning about the different holidays. - Amanda R.
★ This was the perfect way to teach my 4th graders about Holidays around the World during library because the 4th grade teachers had just finished a unit on poetry in ELA. - Terri B.
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Terms of Use:
© Rebecca Davies. All rights reserved by the author. These materials are intended for personal use by a single classroom only. Copying for more than one teacher, classroom, department, school, or school system is prohibited. For use in multiple classrooms, please purchase additional licenses. This product may not be distributed or displayed digitally for public view. Failure to comply is a copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Clipart and elements found in this PDF are copyrighted and cannot be extracted and used outside of this file without permission or license. See product file for clip art and font credits.