Christmas Vocabulary

• Make vocabulary instruction fun with a Christmas-themed vocabulary list and activities. Assemble a list of ords that children will likely recognize, such as "Santa Claus" and "evergreen," along with words such as "yuletide" and "wassail" that may be less familiar. Include words such as "Noel" that will encourage children to learn about how Christmas is celebrated in other cultures. According to Michael Pressley's article in the "Handbook of Reading and Research: Volume III," children who are taught vocabulary and encounter vocabulary in its natural context while reading tend to improve their reading comprehension skills. You can practice both methods with Christmas vocabulary lists. Ask children to read Christmas books and make a tally list for each vocabulary word they find -- the person who finds the most gets a special Christmas treat. You can also teach them the rarer vocabulary words or words from other cultural traditions by giving lessons, reading books to the class or showing movies that include those words or cultural traditions.
  
  

Christmas Stories

• Even though fifth grade students are almost ready to enter adolescence, they probably still look forward to experiencing Christmas as children with games, presents and, perhaps, Santa Claus. Have students explore this idea by reading age-appropriate Christmas stories, such as "The Night Before Christmas" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and even part of "A Christmas Story." As they read, tell children to jot down notes of their own Christmas experiences invoked by the stories. Then ask students to write their own Christmas stories in which they emphasize what is most important about Christmas to them. This teaches children active reading, an important component of reading comprehension in which children learn to not only understand what they read but to react as they read.
  
  

Christmas Nonsense

• A traveling story with a Christmas theme can encourage children to have fun and learn reading skills as well. While the children quietly work, you can start a Christmas story with just a few sentences on the first page of a notebook. Pass the story to a student near your desk. Tell that student to add a few sentences that continue the story and pass it on. This activity becomes more fun when you tell students to make the story as silly or as crazy as possible but remind them it has to be a Christmas theme. When the story has reached everyone in the class, make photocopies and distribute them, then read it out loud as a class. Periodically stop to discuss why parts of the story were so silly or so crazy. This not only helps students practice reading out loud in a laid-back environment, but it also teaches monitoring skills, or skills that help them recognize that what they are reading does not make sense.
  
  

Bible-Based Activities

• During Christmas time, many children read the story of Jesus' birth with their families or in church. This religious exercise can also be a reading comprehension exercise. The Bible is a challenging text for students at a fifth grade reading level, but you can use it to teach students how to use context clues to understand what difficult words mean. For example, you can ask students to read a few verses from the Christmas story found in Luke's second chapter. Next, ask them if they understood a particularly difficult word or name, like "census," "Syria" or "heavenly host." If they did not, have them use the context clues and to devise possible meanings for the word.