Winter Solstice Lesson Details

Gabriel and Alberto (all student names are pseudonyms)

Gabriel does not work well with many students in the class, but he gets along with Alberto.  Both boys are smart and inquisitive.  They are both fairly strong readers, and their grasp of main idea is average for the class.  They are both Level 5 English Language Learners with large English vocabularies and a strong command of spoken English.  Both boys (but especially Alberto) are very interested in planets and astronomy.  I assigned them this paragraph because it matched their reading level and personal interests.:

We live in the northern hemisphere, which means north of the equator.  In summer, our part of the earth is tilted towards the sun.  We get more direct sun light and it stays light out for longer during the day.  In the winter, our part of the earth is tilted away from the sun.  It is colder, and we have shorter days. 

The main idea is not directly stated in the paragraph, but neither is it difficult to figure out.  It was the right level of challenge for these two boys:

Yessica and Martin

Yessica and Martin are both very personable students who would work well with anyone in the class.  Yessica is an English Language Learner at ELD level 4.  Though she often struggles with her written grammar and understanding academic vocabulary, she is a bright student with strong reading comprehension skills, and a mediocre grasp of main idea.  Martin is a bright native English speaker with low-average reading fluency and average reading comprehension.  He has struggled some with main idea.  For Yessica and Martin, I chose a passage that I felt would be easy to understand (though not over-simplified).  Here, the main idea is stated in the second sentence.  To avoid any difficulties with unknown vocabulary, I created a footnote for the definition of one word which I thought they might not be familiar with.

For hundreds of years, many people believed that the changing seasons and longer or shorter days were controlled by different sun gods. The early pagans1 celebrated the Winter Solstice by honoring those gods with festivals and rituals.  They wanted to make the gods happy so that they would bring back the sun!

1 pagans – people who practice very old religions and worship many gods or the earth; people who are not Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.

Cultural Sensitivity

Many of the texts I read while doing research for this passage referenced the winter-time traditions of “our ancestors.”  At first, I borrowed the phrase for my writing; but then I realized that the majority of my students’ ancestors lived in Africa and the Caribbean, not in Europe, where most of these traditions originated.  I replaced the phrase “our ancestors…” with “in olden times, people in Europe…”  I was also careful to tie pagan and Christian traditions in a way that would not undermine the pagan traditions or offend Christian students.

Have you ever heard the song “Deck the halls with boughs of holly”?  During the winter in olden times, people in Europe liked to decorate their homes with things that reminded them that this cold, dark time would not go on forever.  Branches of the holly plant, with its bright red berries and thick green leaves, are an important symbol of life in winter.  Holly plants can live through the harsh, cold winter without dying or turning brown.   Holly is an evergreen.  Evergreens are plants with leaves or needles that stay green throughout the year, like fur trees, pine trees, and mistletoe.  This is one of the reasons that Christians celebrate the birth and life of Jesus by decorating their homes with lively evergreens!