Holiday Pen Pals Around the World!

I am so excited to share my most recent project, "Holiday Pen Pals Around the World"!  Here is a little sneak peak at this project in action.  This project encompasses informational text, close readings, text-dependent questions, a flag ornament for each country, and summarizing response letters!!! Holidays with a little hint of CCSS. :) There are 12 different fictitious pen pals from different countries.  Your students will learn about all of the interesting and unique ways that each pen pal celebrates during the holidays in their own part of the world.  This took me quite a while to research!  But I thought it was worth it since I thought this would be a fun way for my (and your) students to learn this information! The countries included are Mexico, Egypt, England, China, Sweden, Poland, Tanzania, Russia, Poland, Italy, Netherlands, and the United States.  

Have you tried out Close Reading with your students yet?  Students have the opportunity to practice Close Reading strategies like annotating.  The example below was the model that I used with my class.  We all did this one together and then I separated them in small groups and assigned each group to do a different country.  They LOVED it!

FOLLOW UP

As a follow up, I had the students write BACK to their Pen Pal on a postcard ornament AND had they were able to decorate their Pen Pals flag.  We had SO much fun decorating this tree for our door!

Here is another example of the Pen Pal Ornaments!

The kiddos also completed some of the follow-up activities aligned to CCSS such as text dependent questions and supporting their answers with evidence from the text.

Finally, some students wanted to respond further to their Pen Pals!  

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