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Goal-Setting Reading Passages
Explore this topic through Goal-Setting Reading Passages.
Open collectionDecember 31 reading ideas
Finding reading ideas for this date…
Finding reading ideas for this date…
On December 31, New Year’s Eve marks the final day of the Gregorian calendar year. Henri Matisse’s birthday and Thomas Edison’s 1879 public demonstration of electric lighting at Menlo Park add art and invention connections. Use the selected readings to sequence a countdown, make a cut-paper composition, and trace experiments.
Special date
New Year’s Eve marks the final day of the Gregorian calendar year, and celebrations vary across families and places.
4 reading resources
Explore this topic through Goal-Setting Reading Passages.
Open collectionExplore this topic through Schedules and Time Management Reading Passages.
Open collectionUse The Road to Freedom: A Timeline of the American Revolution as related background or for comparison.
Read passageStudents can put the passage’s Times Square events in sequence and compare that public countdown with a family tradition.
Read passageSpecial date
Henri Matisse was born on December 31, 1869.
6 reading resources
Use Art Movements Reading Passages as related background or for comparison.
Open collectionExplore this topic through Making Art with Paper Shapes.
Read passageExplore this topic through How to Create a Memory Collage.
Read passageUse Eric Carle: An Artist of Color and Paper as related background or for comparison.
Read passageStudents can identify how Matisse’s artistic choices changed and use cut paper to arrange contrasting colors and simplified shapes.
Read passageSpecial date
On December 31, 1879, Thomas Edison demonstrated his incandescent electric lighting system to the public at Menlo Park, New Jersey. Read about the testing and teamwork behind electric lighting, then explain why a practical invention needed a working system as well as a lamp.
6 reading resources
Use Inventions Reading Passages as related background or for comparison.
Open collectionUse Energy Reading Passages as related background or for comparison.
Open collectionExplore this topic through Electric Christmas Lights Dazzle America.
Read passageUse Powering the Grid: Nikola Tesla and the Alternating Current Revolution as related background or for comparison.
Read passageStudents can explain why an incandescent lamp needed repeated filament tests and a wider system to deliver electricity.
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Use Visit Times Square! to sequence the public New Year’s Eve events described, then compare that countdown with a family tradition. Students can identify which details come from the passage and which belong to their own experience.
Read about Henri Matisse and use cut paper to arrange contrasting colors and simplified shapes. Then explore Edison’s lighting work by tracing why repeated filament tests and a wider electrical system mattered; connect the reading to a small timeline of experiments and revisions.
