Cinco+De+Mayo+Reinforcing+Activity

The objective for celebrating Cinco de Mayo in a classroom is to share a multicultural lesson to help teach students about cultures different from their own. Here is an activity that a teacher could use to help the students learn about a cultural holiday that they may not be too familiar with. 1.) On May 5, while wearing a sombrero, the teacher will introduce this Mexican holiday to the students and ask them if they have heard of it before. If there are any ELL students from Mexico in the class, this would be a good time to ask them about any personal experiences they have had pertaining to this holiday. By engaging the ELLs with their background knowledge, for a rare opportunity in most classrooms, these ELLs have become the experts when they are normally unfamiliar with the content being introduced. 2.) The teacher will explain to the class how Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexico’s independence, just like the United States has 4th of July for our celebration of independence. 3.) The students will be asked to make a Venn Diagram but only fill in the one side labeled “4th of July” for now. Based off of personal experiences and background knowledge, the students will write down any specific events, activities, games, foods, and drinks that are related with this holiday. Teachers should have a list of examples that they might use in case students are not volunteering any suggestions at first. 4.) The teacher will then read the book __Cinco de Mayo__ to the students. If there are any terms or phrases that are unique to the Hispanic culture, you can ask students familiar with the culture (possibly again the ELLs) to elaborate on these terms and their experiences with them. 5.) Based off of what the students learned from the book, they will fill in the other side of the Venn Diagram labeled “Cinco de Mayo” with any specific events, activities, games, foods, and drinks that are associated with this holiday. The middle portion of the Venn Diagram will be filled with things that are connected with both of the holidays. 6.) After all the students have their own words written down in their Venn Diagrams, the teacher will have them get in groups of 4 to combine their ideas and draw mini pictures of what they all wrote down. Getting into groups for this activity is important because there may be some students in the class that are from a different country and not have any personal experiences with 4th of July, thus being able to learn from their peers. This will be the flip side of ELL experts. Students native to the United States will be able to discuss and teach other students about the customs made unique by the Fourth of July. As part of collaborative learning, students are able to discuss their different cultural backgrounds in order to widen their background knowledge. 7.) Finally, the teacher will make a big Venn Diagram to hang up in the room. This Venn Diagram will contain the same labels as the one created by the students, "Cinco de Mayo", "Fourth of July", and "Both". The students will cut out their pictures that they drew and put them on the class Venn Diagram for everyone to visually see the similarities and differences between each North American cultural holiday. This Venn Diagram can be hung up for the rest of the class as part of a representation of the cultural explorations of the classroom. Over the years, you can start a collection of the different Venn Diagrams and show them as examples to future classes.