Students have worked hard to research their heritage and how they celebrate Christmas or a winter holiday. Thanks to your family discussions, we identified our heritage, then we chose one to focus on. Once we had our culture, we began our research through websites, books, and articles.
We took notes on our research identifying how our culture celebrated, what the holiday was called, what special activities they did, their character like Santa who brings them gifts, special foods, and more. Our big focus was on how similar and different their celebration is to ours. With our research done, we began to answer our focus question that became our essay's "Claim" (or Thesis statement). We then wrote compare and contrast text structure informational essays and/or paragraphs depending on our writing level.
Bringing geography into the project, we used maps, globes, and atlases to discover where our cultural country is on a world map. It is alway interesting to watch students discover the SIZE comparisons of other countries compared to our own. Many of them were shocked by how small their "Country" was. Geography can be very eye opening for one's world view.
Finally, the kids presented their cultural heritage ornament to the class which was to resemble a tradition or celebration that their culture does. The presentations went really well, with each kid sharing about their culture's traditions, and the ornaments turned out fantastic!