Fall Festivals Around the World Comparative Writing Unit & Escape Room

This project-based reading and writing unit includes everything you need to teach your students the compare/contrast text structure through a multicultural fall harvest holiday theme! The culminating product is a beautiful poster showcasing two of the fall harvest holidays, on which students integrate text and visual features to inform their audience about the wide world of harvest holidays!

⭐September '23⭐ New anticipatory engagement intro and slide animation! A One-Page set of the six informational holiday readings, which were originally only in a longer and more complex 2-Page format. These new readings, written at a lower text complexity but still incorporating the essential vocab. and concepts, have been requested by users, and I'm thrilled to offer them now. Also included is access to a newly renovated and updated Google-Site-based Escape Room incorporating the elementary-level text content, supporting videos, maps and puzzles, allowing your students to take a journey around the world of Harvest festivals in a 30-minute to 1-hour timeframe!

What's Included in this product:

Complete set of both 1-Page and 2-Page Informational Texts about 6 different fall/harvest holidays from around the world:

- Korean Chuseok

- Vietnamese Tet Trung Thu/Mid-Autumn Festival

- Jewish Sukkoth

- Mexican Dia de los Muertos

- Indian Diwali

- West African New Yam Festival

The 1-Page readings are written at a lower level of text complexity, and include bold words for emphasis, which also correspond to review puzzles in the escape room.

Preview the Chuseok reading and organizer, they're my free product right now!

- A custom Informational Organizer for each Holiday-

- Venn diagram Organizer for comparing two holidays

- Drafting pages for students' compare/contrast poster

- Poster templates in three versions, one a Google slide

plus instructions on how to print the larger size

- Image banks for both the smaller and larger size poster

- Project launch page and rubric for guidance and assessment

- Overview readings about Harvest Holidays, Fall Equinox,

and American Thanksgiving

- Two-week recommended Lesson Sequence

A full-fledged modeling sequence which includes:

- A fascinating authentic video I produced about the Buddha's birthday

celebration in South Korea;

- Graphic organizers for eliciting and scaffolding the compare/contrast

target language;

- A fully written and illustrated poster comparing Buddha's Birthday and

Christmas, which models the exact writing structure and format students

will use for their fall holidays poster;

Suggestions for further resources to use for introduction and extended learning;

Student-centered yet carefully scaffolded to encourage success, this study unit offers a framework to understand how cultural celebrations bind communities, and what we have in common across the globe. Fascinating content your students will love!