When you combine my favorite hobby and favorite holiday together (travel and Christmas), you get one of my favorite winter units to teach…Holidays Around the World! I have switched it up over the years with a variety of lessons and crafts, but this most recent version is aligned with Common Core reading and writing standards.
Packing List
First, you can tell your kiddos to pack their bags for a little holiday adventure! Each student is given their own suitcase to color and decorate, which is used to store all of their mementos from their travels (specifically, all of the work that is created during this journey). The first items that go into the suitcase are their passport, map, and travel guide book.
Their passport, complete with personal information and photo I.D., is where they keep the stamps they earn every time they visit a new place. They also locate each place they travel to on the map, and color code it using the key/legend.
Reading Comprehension Practice
When I say “visit” or “travel to” a new place, I mean that the kids have read about it in their travel guide book. There are Close Reading passages for up to 10 different countries/continents.
You could choose to have them annotate these passages to help with their understanding. Have them circle key words or unfamiliar words and discuss their meaning, put a star next to main ideas, and underline key details.
This poster is a helpful visual I’ve used for students to refer to for Close Reading. It’s a blended combination of different posters found on Pinterest, and then I’ve included the annotations that our grade level uses at the bottom.
Opinion Writing
Once students have traveled to all of the places in their guide book, this writing prompt is introduced:
In your opinion, in which part of the world would you most like to visit to celebrate the holidays?
They brainstorm some of the favorite places they’ve visited on a circle map.
Once they’ve narrowed it down to their top favorite place, they continue the prewriting process. Students create an outline, rough draft, and edit/revise. Students refer back to their travel guide book, using text evidence from the reading passage to help support their opinion.
These templates are helpful in allowing students to organize their ideas and focus on specific editing criteria.
The x’s on the rough draft writing paper are meant to remind students to skip lines. Skipping lines leaves them more space to make editing marks and revisions.
When they are ready for their final draft, they get the special publishing paper for the specific place they chose. It’s exciting seeing all of the different places they choose. I also love how it’s a great celebration of diversity in a classroom community.
Digital Paperless Option
This Holidays Around the World resource has also been updated to include a digital Google Slides version if you prefer a paperless option.
Students can be given access to a digital suitcase, passport, map, and travel guide book.
*Tip: Even if you use the traditional paper version of this resource, you can still utilize these digital slides. Project or screen share them with your class when reading together as a whole group. In the past I’ve always just printed my own “teacher copy” of the travel guide book and displayed them using a document camera. But the Google Slides save the trouble of having to print/copy those pages.
For the writing component, students can choose the matching slide for the place they chose to write about and type their opinion paragraph.
Where Can I Get It?
Ready to take your students on this reading and writing adventure? Everything I’ve shared is included in my Holidays Around the World resource, available here in my shop on my website. You can also find it on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Whether traveling is a part of your winter break plans or your lesson plans (or both!) I hope your holidays adventures are full of cheer this year!