Teacher’s Brain

Category: Teacher’s Pay Teachers

Teaching Winter Holidays Around The World

Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips, Winter

Winter is an exciting time for kids of all ages! For teachers of young children, it’s an especially fun time in the classroom. While the students may be a little distracted by all the holiday events, winter provides a perfect opportunity to join learning and celebrations. Children can learn about holidays through listening to stories, reading, music, art, and even food. 

Celebrations from around the world provide an opportunity to discuss geography and culture in a way that gets students excited.

They may see similarities between their own lives and those of children in other countries.  They may even enjoy bringing elements of the winter holidays they learn about into their own celebrations! 

Holiday celebrations in the classroom are another way to teach students about other cultures. For a class party, foods from other countries could be served. Students could participate in art activities using themes they’ve learned about in their world studies. (

Instead of just focusing on the American traditions they are familiar with, kids can experience the ways that other cultures celebrate with their friends and family. While increasing a connection between kids around the world, these activities will keep students learning during the holiday season! 

If you need some inspiration to talk about holidays in your classroom, The Winter Holidays Around the World Journal is a perfect springboard into learning about celebrations.

winter holidays

On each page, students will read a short passage about a winter holiday celebration, trace key words, and draw a picture to demonstrate comprehension. There is a flag to color for each country’s page. They can also locate the country on a map or globe and color the illustrations. Teachers can also facilitate further research into the winter holiday celebrations using the Internet or other media.

winter holidays

Students will have a great time learning about different traditions while practicing their reading and writing skills!

If you want more holiday classroom fun, check out my Christmas freebies here! 

winter holidays

Try the Digital Escape Room 1-3rd, focus is on Main Idea and Holidays Around the World!

Tips For Teaching Main Idea

Teacher's Pay Teachers

Have you ever felt frustrated or at a loss when teaching the main idea to your students? Sometimes it can feel like you are going around and around without making progress on your students comprehension of the concept. Teaching the main idea to elementary students sounds simple because all the students need to understand is what the story is mostly about. However it can actually be a little tricky.

 Reading comprehension itself is one thing (you can check out my tips for reading comprehension here), catching onto the main idea is another, and this can be a difficult concept for young learners. You want your students to truly understand how to find the main idea and supporting details of a story, but to do that they need to know what it is. I have tried different ways of teaching this concept, and after some trial and error, have found what seems to work for my students. 

Here are some tips for teaching main idea and details

  1. Utilize visuals. For younger students, the more visuals you have, the better! You can use anchor charts or pictures to get students more practice with finding the main idea of different things. 
  2. Use the title. This method is easy and straightforward. Show your students how the title of a story can many times be a clue about what the story is mostly about. 
  3. Read together. When you are reading with your students, pause throughout the story to think out loud with your students and ask them comprehension questions. Showing them how to think about the story when you are reading can help them to do it themselves. 
  4. Use a graphic organizer. There are a lot of graphic organizers out there, but I like to use one that can help my younger students visualize to better understand. A table doesn’t stay up without the legs to support it. This table top organizer uses that concept to help your students put it all together. The tabletop itself  is where you put the main idea and the table legs are where the supporting details go. 

teaching main idea

 

This graphic organizer goes along with my reading comprehension passages and questions resource. This resource is a yearlong program that helps teach your kindergarten, 1st, or 2nd grade students reading comprehension with passages, questions, graphic organizers, posters, awards, and more. This resource is versatile enough that you can use it with any of the stories you read with your students. 

teaching main idea

Some of the topics covered include: 

  • Main ideas
  • Details
  • Summarizing inferences 
  • Cause and effect
  • Fact and fiction
  • Conclusions
  • Authors purpose
  • Sequencing
  • Setting 
  • Character traits
  • 72 different reading comprehension passages

Do you have any tricks for teaching main idea? Let me know in the comments!

teaching main idea

Turkey In Disguise Project For Kids

Teacher's Pay Teachers

 As a teacher, you know that family involvement is an important aspect of developing successful learners. Studies show that when families are involved in students learning, the students are more likely to succeed. However, it can be hard to find activities that families actually want to do together and that aren’t too time consuming.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, this Turkey in Disguise project would be a great way to get family involvement while working on an engaging holiday themed activity (check out my Thanksgiving escape room here). This turkey project is a great tool for helping families have fun together, while using reading and writing skills. 

The Turkey in Disguise project incorporates listening, writing, and problem solving in one activity. In a busy classroom, finding activities that address multiple objectives is necessary. When they are fun for students and parents as well, that’s even better! 

Here’s a walk through of the Turkey in Disguise Project

This fun turkey project includes everything you need to get your students’ creative juices flowing. First, students will listen to a read-aloud featuring a turkey that tries several disguises to save himself from being Thanksgiving dinner.

Then, they will work with their families to come up with a disguise to protect their turkey. They will use their writing skills to describe the disguise. This simple project will engage students in creative problem solving, writing for a specific purpose, and making connections to text. As an added bonus, they will enjoy getting creative with their families.

turkey

What ways do you use to get families involved in learning? Let me know in the comments!

turkey in disguise

If you are teaching VIRTUAL, try the digital version of this activity here.

Election and Voting Activities for Kids

Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips, Writing

Teaching students about the importance of voting in a democracy is very important.  Now more than ever kids are curious about politics. So, how can you teach students without getting too political? If you teach about elections and the voting process instead of using real political candidates, young students will still develop an understanding of how elections work, the responsibility of voting and how their feelings tie into the process. Election and voting activities for kids can be simple.

Here are some things your can do to teach about voting:

  • Share books like Grace for President by Kelly Dipucchio or  Vote for ME! by Ben Clanton.
  • Talk about commercials, signs or local leader positions.
  • Write opinion papers about voting or elections.
  • Discuss how feelings help make decisions.
  • Hold a class pet election.
  • Students can take polls about favorite snacks or sports.
  • Make a voting booth or box. Have ballots for students to pick their end of the day activity.
  • Create a class campaign for a class mascot with posters, stickers and commercials.
  • MOST IMPORTANTLY, lead by example. Let them see your “I VOTED” sticker or tell them how you take time out of your day to vote.

Ideas for PARENTS to do with children to help them learn about voting:

  • Take your child to vote and discuss why you are voting for a particular candidate.
  • Write a letter to an elected official as a family.
  • Talk about how peaceful protesting is patriotic. Loving a country means speaking up when we disagree with actions.
  • Share your beliefs with your child.
  • Discuss how people all have different ideas and how to respect each other.
  • Read a book about voting, democracy or citizenship.
  • Point out signs about elections and discuss how they help us learn about candidates.
  • Let the family vote about what is for dinner.
  • Vote on a family vacation.
  • Use math to explain how we count results.

Virtual Teaching about Voting

Google Slides and Forms make it easy for students to learn about the voting process. You can create a poll using Google Forms to send to your students virtually. Share the results with the class over a live virtual meeting.

Election and Voting Activities for Kids

Check out the K-3 Google Slides for teaching kids about the voting process.


If you are needing some tips for teaching while social distancing, check out my post here!