Looking for vocabulary and language activities for speech therapy AND to facilitate understanding of multicultural traditions, including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa? Exploring these holidays is an activity rich in vocabulary! If you are working in a school district that still supports the “month-long Christmas-curriculum” in December, it might be time to make a change! If you need language activities for older students tied to Thanksgiving, check out this post on attitude of gratitude!
Why teach Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in Speech Therapy?
Why should SLPs use Hanukkah and Kwanzaa to teach vocabulary? Teaching about holidays around the world not only promotes inclusion and helps build valuable social emotional skills-like perspective taking and empathy, it also enables SLPs to use evidence-based vocabulary practices during speech therapy such as:
- Embedding vocabulary instruction into school themes or current events. Many students are either hearing or learning about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa which makes them candidates for this content!
2. Making connections helps students learn new words! Many students are familiar with at least one of the December holidays, Christmas, Hanukaah and/or Kwanzaa, making it easier to apply knowledge about one holiday to another! Making connections and associations help students learn new words!
3. Interest fuels engagement in learning. Older students are interested in learning about other cultures and this interest facilitates engagement in learning. Engagement is half the battle in speech therapy with older students.
Standards-based Therapy Material!
SLPs must tie their vocabulary interventions to academic performance and if you are living in one of 41 states in the U.S. that have adopted the common-core standards, you know all the K-12 standards have standards related to both vocabulary acquisition AND informational text. So, find informational text on these holidays and get started!
Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Christmas Vocabulary
Effective word learning includes being able to categorize or group words to show the relationship between words and a concept. This activity uses the word “light” (a theme in Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas) and its antonym “dark” and has the student sort synonyms and antonyms.
If you’re like me, you tend to spend lots of time teaching tier 2 vocabulary but you can fuel your student’s love for words through content-specific words, similar to tier 3 vocabulary-you know, the words even the teacher has to look up! This activity gives students practice finding the embedded meanings for Kwanzaa vocabulary.
Compare and Contrast Hanukkah, Kwanzaa &/or Christmas
Once your students have learned about at least two of these holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa) have them compare and contrast key concepts of each holiday, such as the symbols, food, and gift-giving traditions. If your students are familiar with one of these three holidays, it gives them somewhat of a knowledge base for comparing and contrasting it with one or two of the others!
Practice conversation roles while discussing holidays!
How do we learn vocabulary? Not just through drill, or even just the process of looking up definitions but also by reading, writing, spelling and talking about the vocabulary. I like to assign a role to each student to fullfill in a conversation about one or more of the three holidays. So, students get practice in having different pragmatic roles (expressing an opinion, disagreeing with another person’s opinion) in academic discussions, and get the opportunity to talk and use the vocabulary in their expressive language.
If you are interested in my winter holiday packet, click on the image below! It can be printed out or used for online learning on a teletherapy platform with screen-sharing and digital annotation. It’s also compatible with TPT’s EASEL platform!
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