December Holiday Activities: Education World

Details

Activity Description

Education World offers ten lessons about December celebrations, observances, and activities from several cultures. Included are: A Hanukkah game, a Kwanzaa recipe, and other ideas. The one featured here is an activity that involves students in diagramming similarities and differences in holiday celebrations!

Preparation

• Read and/or print the lesson plan using the Web Site Example above.
• Go through the various Web sites on the lesson plan.
• Select the ones you want the students to access.
• E-mail the Web site addresses to the students, write them on the board, add them to your class Web site, or create a Word document with clickable links to distribute the links to your students.
• Prepare (print) copies of a Venn Diagram. (See Example Document above.)

How-To

1. Discuss Compare/Contrast essay format . (You can assign students to read this Web site if working individually.)
2. Show Venn Diagram.
3. Access Web sites with ways Christmas is celebrated around the world.
4. Have students sign up for a country to investigate.
5. Each student prepares an oral report on the country investigated.
6. As listeners, each student fills in the Venn diagram for two countries presented.
7. Each student writes a compare contrast essay about the country they investigated and one of the countries presented by other students.

Teacher Tips

• The compare/contrast format is sometimes difficult for students to do. By presenting this activity, students see similarities and differences in Christmas celebrations and then can write about them.
• After all essays are completed, students can share them with each other by reading them to the class.

More Ways

• The original Web site, Education World, has many other activities to try.
• Think about using a blog site to let each student write their essay online so others can read it.
• Let them use Word processing software to type out their essay, thereby including more technology skills.

Program Areas

• ABE: Adult Basic Education

Levels

• Low
• Intermediate
• High
• All Levels

Documents

• Venn Diagram.doc - Venn Diagram from Education World

Subjects

• Reasoning Through Language Arts
  • Essays

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