Holiday customs are focus for Adelphia School pupils
BY TOYNETT HALL Staff Writer

HOWELL- First- and second-graders at the Adelphia Elementary School excitedly lined up against the corridor wall holding handmade pictures and waiting to take a cultural journey to six different winter holidays that are celebrated during December.

As part of their social studies curriculum, the children are taught the principles and customs of Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas and Ramadan.

According to PrincipalAlysson Keelen, the program originated and extended out of the school's writing lab.

Assistant Principal Angela O'Cone said, "The writing lab is a program that focuses on innovative and effective practices that focus on reading and writing for all students of all ability levels."

Although the teachers have sponsored this program in previous years, what made this year's lesson different was the approach.

According to Dawn Strodel, first-grade teacher and co-coordinator with Toni Ferrone, Linda Gonzalez, Debbie Long, Lois Muhaw and Cindy Van Glahn, "each teacher was assigned to teach one of the selected holidays, instead of being responsible for teaching all of them. Once we established who was teaching what, the children rotated from classroom to classroom. This gave the students and each teacher a chance to interact with one another."

While in the classroom the students determined what it is they knew about the holiday, what they would like to learn and what they had learned thus far.After that, they received grade appropriate work pertinent to the subject matter.

In the classroom where the holiday of Ramadan was being taught, pupils eagerly raised their hands to answer questions. They learned that Ramadan is the ninth month on the Muslim calendar, which begins and ends with a crescent moon. They also learned that during Ramadan, Muslims fast from the first appearance of light to sunset.

The pupils discussed the differences and similarities of Ramadan and the holidays they celebrate. Substitute teacher Meghan McCarthy said she was not familiar with the holiday and learned new things as well.

Once the discussion ended the children were handed a sheet with an uncolored crescent moon in the center. Each pupil colored the moon before moving on to discover another holiday.

According to Keelen, what was exciting about this lesson was that the children gained the opportunity "to work with different teachers and experience a different instructional style."

The teachers also kept in mind the purpose of the activity, which was exposing children to different cultures and teaching tolerance of others through the exposure to various cultures.

According to Van Glahn, a secondgrade teacher who taught a lesson about Kwanzaa, these types of programs are "very important because they show diversity. It also shows that everyone comes with their own values, traditions, and cultures. When you enrich the children in knowledge of other cultures it gives them more tolerance and understanding."

Ferrone, a second-grade teacher who taught a lesson about Hanukkah, said that in addition to showing the pupils how people are different, the program also showed "how similar all the holidays are, focusing on the similarities instead of the differences."

O'Cone said, "Adelphia supports cultural diversity. This was one way to expose the students to different holidays and cultures."