A Lesson Plan for Comparing Religious Winter Holidays

By Maria Celeste Mahaffey

Maria Mahaffey is an ITA for SIATech, San Diego.

One of the great challenges of working with our special population of at-promise students is their lack of cultural literacy and their inability to relate many topics beyond their immediate environment.  As a social studies teacher, my interests are not only to convey my subject content but also to do so in a way that is relevant to my students’ lives while it relates it to our global community.  Many students struggle to differentiate between the concept of city, state, and nation and how the American system compares to that of our foreign counterparts.  Cultural illiteracy seems to be becoming more pervasive and is a special challenge to me as a social studies teacher.

In order to broaden my students’ experiences and to make their learning a significant activity, I use small group instruction as a means to give the unit assignments a more comprehensive purpose.  Most recently, I conducted a World History small group discussion on various winter religious holidays and imperialism.  The purpose of the activity was to have students compare religious holidays and to realize how imperialism affected the spread of religion.

The objective of the lesson is for students to, through a written worksheet and oral discussion, compare and contrast five religious winter holidays and to evaluate how imperialism influenced the spread of the three monotheistic religions with at least an 80% level of accuracy.
 
To accomplish this objective, I checked out books on Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Ramadan, and Las Posadas from the children’s section at my local library to ensure the material is readable for all students.  The children’s books were short and had several colorful pictures that could be used a cues for the worksheet that I downloaded from Education World (http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/TM/WS_lp290-01b.shtml).  While this worksheet is geared for students of different learning levels and skills, it makes it easy for students to fill in and draw comparisons.  I worked with groups of 5-8 and either assigned holidays to individuals or pairs.  If working in pairs, one student was the scribe and the other was the narrator when we discussed our findings.  Students were given 10-15 minutes to find information for each column from the books I provided or their own experiences.  Once we began discussing, students were responsible for filling out the remainder of the worksheet based upon what their classmates shared.  Any areas in which students could not provide information, I filled in the gap.  As soon as we completed the second holiday, we began drawing comparisons and contrasts among the holidays as wells as their experiences with the holidays.
 
Once the worksheet portion was completed, I distributed a map of the world that depicted the demographics of world religions.  This map is provided by the New York State Education Department and can be found at http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/socst/grade3/geoimages/Image12.gif. We examined the three monotheistic religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and local tribal religions.  The students considered why Latin America (Central and South America) is predominantly Catholic while most of North America is Protestant and how that connected to the religious demographics of Europe.   We then discussed the dominance of Islam throughout North Africa and the Middle East.  Finally, we discussed the areas that had predominantly local tribal religions.  The students were able to realize how imperialism affects more than just politics and economics; it can affect culture for centuries. 
 
This activity was very easy to prepare and conduct within one block.  I was able to meet with at least two groups during each block and still have a lengthy discussion.  Working with students in this manner not only covered assignments from two World History units, it presented the students the chance to gain a holistic perspective of their course of study.  Most importantly, it gave students a vehicle for gaining cultural literacy and demonstrating their higher order thinking skills.

Maria Celeste Mahaffey holds a BA in International Affairs from the George Washington University and a Masters of Arts in Teaching Secondary Social Science from Western Governors University.  Maria currently has her single subject CA credential and works as an ITA at the San Diego SIATech campus.