Week 7: Celebrations And Festivities

It’s the penultimate (second last) week of the Student Blogging Challenge for 2019!

Some of our STUBC participants will be celebrating Thanksgiving soon. Other participants will have other special holidays coming up like Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or New Year.

This week we’d like to find out about the celebrations and festivities that are important to you. You might learn a few things about different cultures as well. 

Week Six Recap

You can find all the posts submitted about emojis here (or click on the pink week six box on the sidebar).

Let’s take a look at just some of the fantastic work we spotted last week:

• Mrs. Yollis’ 3rd grade class invites you to solve their fabulous emoji math puzzles. They drew inspiration from Solvemoji.
• Ms Krantzberg’s grade two students designed their own emojis on paper. Check out the photos!
• Breckan made some emoji art and included a little blurb to explain what the activity was all about which is very helpful.
• 14 year old Jordan made a fun story out of 10 emojis.
• Mrs. Caudill showcased some of her students’ work in a blog post.
• Kate wrote a fabulous post and completed more than one task. Check out the way she used a Toggle using the Live Shortcodes plugin to reveal her answer. Readers have to click on a box to make the answers appear.
• You can view more great work on our 2019 Student Blogging Challenge Flipboard.

Reminders

Here are a few more important reminders:

• The Google Forms for weeks 1-5 are now closed. If you’re catching up, just submit your post in a Google Form that’s still open (week 6 or 7).
• To become a better blogger, before you publish consider: have I proofread? Is my text broken up in short paragraphs (bullet points can be good too)? Do I have an image?
• Do your posts have any writing in them? Some bloggers are just adding an image to a post without any text. This can leave readers confused. Step up your efforts by including a little bit of writing that introduces the task.
• Some classes are currently on holidays. That’s totally fine. You can catch up when you get back or just skip the weeks you’re away.

Time to begin this week’s topic…

Celebrations And Festivities

We have a diverse group taking part in the Student Blogging Challenge with lots of different cultural backgrounds represented.

Around the world, people celebrate different holidays and festivals.

It can be fun to tell people about our own traditions while hearing about others!

Want to learn a bit more about just some of the holidays that are celebrated around the world? This video might help.

This resource from ABC Australia also has some useful videos and information.

Celebrations Poll

Just for fun, let’s find out what events you and your family celebrate.

Please take our quick poll below. 

Here’s a link to the poll if you want to share it with your students.

https://forms.gle/KaDUKnWQUw7FLzZu7

We’ll share the results next week.

Week Seven Tasks

This week there are 4 tasks to choose from that explore holidays, celebrations, and festivities. 

Our graphic summarises the tasks and I will explain each task in more detail below.

Task 1: Family Celebrations

Think of all the holidays, festivals, or celebrations that are important to your family. Write a blog post about this.

• You could make a list of your family’s celebrations with a short description for each one, or
• You could choose one celebration to explain in more detail.

Don’t forget to include lots of information about your holiday so your readers can get a clear understanding of this special day/season.

You could include things like:

• The time of year/date it’s celebrated.
• What you do to celebrate? Are there special costumes, decorations, music, lights, food, prayers, etc?
• Do people give each other gifts?
• Who is involved in the celebration? Do you visit other people or host family and friends?
• What special memories do you have?

You might even like to do some research into the origins of your holiday.

Examples:

• Nandini from India used a Google Slides presentation to tell us about the Holi festival.
• Mr. Matt told us about Chinese New Year in Taiwan.
• Brady shared a bit about all the holidays he celebrates.
• Satheprincess14 wrote about Holi.
• Mrs. Matveyeva’s class in Kazakhstan wrote about their spring festival called Nauryz.

Task 2: Photo Spark

Often, holidays and celebrations include different decorations, food, costumes, or other objects.

Think of a celebration that’s important in your family and share a photo of something that represents that holiday.

Write a reflection to give readers an idea of the significance of this object.

Check out this example on the New York Times — Holiday Memories. 

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for sharing this idea. 

Remember, don’t include photos of people (including yourself) without permission.

Examples:

• Keylee shared a photo that represents Christmas.
• Gabby wrote an excellent piece about celebrations that included multiple pictures and some fun polls.

Task 3: Holiday Craft

Some people enjoy making craft for special holidays and seasons.

This task involves creating something and then adding a photo of it to a blog post with a description. Or you could even make a video tutorial for your readers!

If you find inspiration from a website, be sure to include the link in your post.

Craft inspiration:

• Origami Club has a list of origami (paper folding) objects you can make for a variety of holidays.
• DLTK has lots of ideas sorted into different holidays.
• RedTedArt has some great seasonal craft ideas.

Examples:

• Rhiann made a fantastic video to share a craft idea.
• Kaylie made a candle and explained how she did it. She also including the link to the site she used.
• Mia explained how she made some snowflakes.

Task 4: Holiday Poem

A special holiday or celebration can be a great topic to write a poem about.

This task involves writing any sort of poem about any celebration or festival that’s important to you.

Stuck for ideas?

Why not try magnetic poetry or a visual poem?

Magnetic Poetry — This is where you put words together to make a poem. It uses Google Drawings or Slides.

• Halloween magnetic poetry by Kasey Bell
• Thanksgiving magnetic poetry by Jamie Forshey
• Easter magnetic poetry by Jamie Forshey
• St. Patrick’s Day magnetic poetry by Jamie Forshey

Visual Poem

Explore the fantastic poetry generators on the Language is a Virus website. (I believe this works best on a computer rather than tablet/mobile device).

For example, their visual poetry mosaic tool displays your work as a shape. Take a screenshot of your end result and add it to a blog post as an image.

If you don’t want to use that tool, you could display your poem creatively using a tool like Google Drawings or Canva.

Submit Your Post URL ⬇

If you’d like a commenter and others to visit your post about celebrations, fill in the form below.

This video shows you how to find your URL…

Note, this isn’t a real class blog. Just one I used for testing 😉

 

This graphic below should help you understand what a post URL looks like if you’re using Edublogs/CampusPress/WordPress

The Google Form

Edit: The week 7 Google Form is now closed. Feel free to enter the URL of your work in the week 8 Google Form (closes Sunday December 8, 2019).

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Next week’s topic: Celebrate And Reflect!

Remember, next week is the final week of the Student Blogging Challenge.