Cross Curricular Themes & Specials Days: January
January means the start of our celebrating special and unique days in the month, & starting new themes and topics! Teaching with a cross curricular approach means that in my class every subject and topic relates in some way to the Term’s big ideas/themes. I try to keep the themes as large and open-ended as possible so there is plenty of opportunity to make connections and links.
Special & Unique Days From Around the World in January:
- 1 New Years Day Click Here for an Easy First Week Back Activity & Bulletin Board
- 4 Ribbon Dress Day (CA)
- 13 Bikaner Camel Festival (India)
- 15 Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- 15 Pongal Festival (India)
- 15 World Snow Festival (Switzerland)
- 15 Uttarayan/ Makra Sankranti/ International Kite Day
- 18 Bodhi Day
- 18 Thesaurus Day
- 24 Kiruna Snow Festival (Sweden)
- 27 World Holocaust Memorial Day
- 27 Family Literacy Day
- 30 Up Helly AA Fire Festival (Scotland)
This is a disclaimer in acknowledgement and recognition that this list does not indicate all holidays, celebrations, observances, and unique events that occur around the world. It will continue to be a work in progress each year. The goal of this growing list is to serve as a starting point and a source of inspiration for teachers looking to highlight the multicultural, multilingual, and special world in which we live.
My rules of thumb for choosing themes/topics:
- Limit yourself to 2 or 3, otherwise it becomes harder to keep consistency, stick to the theme, and make connections clear to students
- Choose themes that stem from things YOU are genuinely interested in
- Search your school library, Pinterest, and your own book collection for those inspiration pieces that can inspire a special project or guide your unit
Stay tuned for my Term 2 and Term 3 overview – coming soon! But in the meantime, here is how I am starting Term 2 and laying the foundation for the activities and projects to come.
Just to note, the following themes are planned with the BC Curriculum for a Grade 4/5 French Immersion classroom in mind. Click here for the specifics.
Theme # 1: Animals
ELA/FLA
Skills and topics in focus:
- Research & Note taking – Grade 4 &5
- Paragraph basics and writing paragraphs – Grade 4 & 5
- ELA novel study: The One and Only Ivan – Grade 4 & 5
Science
Skills and topics in focus:
- Biomes – Grade 4
- Sensing and Responding – humans, animals, plants – Grade 4
- Basic structures and functions of the body systems – Grade 5
Inspiration pieces: I shopped my collection
- “The One and Only Ivan” (2015), Katherine Applegate (Author), Patricia Castelao (Illustrator)
- “Savais-tu?” French Edition series, Alain M. Bergeron (Author), Michel Quintin (Author)
- “Qui va gagner?” French Edition series, Jerry Pallota (Author), Rob Bolster (Illustrator)
- “The Animal Awards,” Martin Jenkins & Illustrated by Tor Freeman
Theme # 2: Human Rights
Social Studies
Topics in focus:
- Demographic changes in post-Confederation British Colombia – Grade 4
- Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad
- Settlement & Migration of European and American peoples
- Relocation/Resettlement of First Peoples (including Numbered Treaties, and Reserves)
- The changing nature of Canadian immigration over time – Grade 5
- Push & Pull reasons for immigration to BC, including East and South Asian immigration
- Effect of immigration on the development of Canada’s industries and construction
- Chinese Railway Workers
- Sikh loggers
- Eastern European farmers
- Past discriminatory government policies and actions (more topics to come as we work through Canada’s “hiSTORY” – Grade 5
- Head Tax on Chinese immigrants
- 1907 Anti-Asian Riots
- The Komagata Maru incident
Other curriculum topics like Physical and Health Education, Career Education, Visual Arts, Applied Designs Skills, and Technologies and Mathematics each connect in a broader context to the topics listed above & the special, unique days celebrated around the world. More on these to come in a more in-depth post on planning!