Teaching in a Small Town: Christmas Around the World!!

Hello Friends :)

I hope you and your loved ones had an amazing Thanksgiving! As teachers, we have so many things to be thankful for!

My friends and I in the classroom learned a lot about Thanksgiving during November and we also started learning about Christmas. I know! I know! Christmas in November? Well, when you have so many things you want to share with your students it is hard to fit it all into those 3 short weeks before Christmas break. So, we got started early!! I wanted all of my students to know that Christmas is celebrated world wide and not just in their community. I read to them many different books about how other countries celebrate Christmas and they were overwhelmingly shocked that not all people celebrate in the same ways they do. We learned a lot together. I then let my friends do their own research about a specific country by using iPads, laptops, and books. They really enjoyed this assignment.

I wanted a way for them to show what they learned so I narrowed down what they would be looking for in each country. They looked up:

1. Food

2. They Call Santa...

3. Decorations

4. Weather

5. Did You Know?

I chose these five items because that is what they seemed most interested in. Once the research was done, they created posters with the information on them.

That is not all... We then got a world map and mapped all of the countries that we chose. We needed a lot of wall space to demonstrate our learning... so I decided on the hall. One of my students made a point that no one did the United States. I told them because we all celebrate so differently and I wanted them to write a personal paper about how they celebrate Christmas. My kiddos were so excited to write about how their family and them celebrate.

This is a prime example that students get excited about reading and writing when it is something they are interested in. I encourage you to break from the norm and do something because your kiddos want to do and they thrive when they are doing what they love. And hey! They were learning so much.