Holidays Around the World

Another example of how teachers infuse academic lessons into holiday festivities is first grade teacher Toni Chant's "Holidays Around the World"  which is so appropriate this year as our theme is "Around the World in 180 Days"!Although our first grade has a Pacing Guide,  each teacher is encouraged to use the students' writing that they see each day to make decisions about what needs to be taught in each particular class and in what order. You will notice that all of the first grade classes are doing nonfiction writing at this time of year but some started with patterned or "question and answer" nonfiction books. Another class started with "All About Me Books." Some will infuse procedural writing into their report writing while others will do instructions/ "how to" writing as a separate project. The final product expectation for report writing is the same for all first grade students although the path to that point may look different in each class. In Toni's case, her class worked through researching how countries all over the world spend their holidays. They completed an attribute chart and a web for each country of interesting information. They even culminated their work with a holiday feast of foods from around the world. The holiday report example below actually includes information from eight different countries and then ends with a chapter about the child's own celebration in the USA. I have included the first and last chapters from this report. Notice that in the final chapter the writer begins using the nonfiction convention of bolded or underlined type at the beginning of each section.In Mexico they speak Spanish. Los Pasados is one of the holidays in Mexico. During Los Pasados children walk from house to house asking for a place to stay and on the third day they say, "No place to stay in the stable." In Mexico the flag colors are red, white, and green. In Mexico there are toys that are called crackers. Crackers are toys that one person holds one side and one holds the other and when you pull it breaks open and inside there are sometimes beans inside there and also paper crowns inside the cracker. Also Mexico is located in North America. In Mexico they eat tortillas, tacos and burritos. In Mexico they wear sombreros and play the maracas. Mexico is south of the United States and North of Brazil.

Flag
The colors of the flag is read, white blue.
Language
The common language spoken in the USA is English.
Continent
USA is located in North America.
Food
For the holidays I eat turkey, pie and fruit.
Traditions
My family and me celebrate Christmas and Ramadan - even Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving.