Lesson Plan #3: Integrating Language Arts & Social Studies Grade: 3 Social Studies Strand: Civics

Submitted By: Michele Arnold

EDEL 453: Teaching Elementary School Social Science Nevada State College Spring 2014 Instructor: Karen Powell

Lesson Plan #3 - Civics

B. Summary of the Lesson Plan:

submitted by: Michele Arnold

This lesson plan is designed for third grade students to learn about responsibilities in their classroom community and school community. Students will read from Houghton Mifflin Social Studies book, Communities (pg. 204-205). C. Basic Information: Grade Level: Third grade Time to Complete this Lesson: about 50 minutes for lesson, then activity to follow up Groupings: whole class reading, pairs brainstorming, group brainstorming, whole class activity, individual writing

D. Materials: Smart board Paper, pens Items for project (clean school bulletin boards) Houghton Mifflin Social Studies Book, Communities, pages 204-205

E. Objectives: o NV State Social Studies Standards o C13.3.3 Explain individual responsibilities in the classroom and the school. I can describe the roles in the classroom and how we are part of a school community. Student-Friendly Standards

F. Vocabulary Common good-whatever helps the most people in a community Community-group of people who live in the same area Volunteer-person who works feely, without pay School community-group of people having same school in common

G. Procedure: 1. The class discusses what a community is. Teacher asks students to raise hands and offer some ideas of what makes a community and writes responses on smart board. Next, we discuss what makes our school a community and what makes our classroom a community. Teacher explains we each can do our part to help our community and
Nevada State College EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor page 2

Lesson Plan #3 - Civics

submitted by: Michele Arnold

today we are focusing on class community and how we can help our school community. Teacher discusses how our roles in the classroom help our class community to be effective. 2. Students pair up and write down some of the classroom roles students participate in. After 5 minutes the teacher lists many of the different roles the different pairs came up with.

3. Students turn to page 204-205 in their Social Studies text and as a class we read the story about students in Arizona helping their community. The class discusses their thoughts on the story. Teacher Questions 1) Do students admire what the students did. 2) Would they like to do something like this? Teacher focuses on helping their school community and starting on a bit of a smaller scale. 4. Students are put into groups to discuss some ways the class could do something to help the school. After about 10 minutes, the class comes together and discusses the different ideas and chooses an activity the class can do to help the school. The class chooses roles for students to achieve this goal such as materials director, plans, timing, etc. For this example the class chooses to clean and re-paper the bulletin boards in the entire school. Plans are made to accomplish this task. 5. After this task has been completed students write an article describing the activity their class took place in and how it helped the school. Students will detail the different roles they each took part in in order to achieve the long term goal.

H. Assessment: What will you use to measure student understanding I will read the written responses from the students to measure their understanding. I will also do some measuring while students are brainstorming ideas of class project and how to achieve it. Explain how you will know students understand the concepts from the lesson. Students must explain responsibilities in the class and the school and will write about this in their paper. I will know if they understand the concept from these written responses.

I.

Closure:
EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor page 3

Nevada State College

Lesson Plan #3 - Civics

submitted by: Michele Arnold

Students pair up and talk about their favorite role in the classroom and their least favorite role in the classroom and why.

J. Reflection: 1. Which part of the lesson do you think will be the easiest for you to teach? The different types of communities will be easiest I believe. Once they learn the big concept of community, students can relate to the smaller school community and even smaller classroom community. 2. Which part will be most challenging for you to teach? During the discussion it may be hard for students to really grasp how we each need our roles, and to actually do our part in order to achieve a long term goal. 3. How will you follow up or extend this lesson? Students can think of some ways to help the community on a bigger scale. They can discuss with their families some ways to help out. 4. What can you do for students who dont grasp the concepts? Students can chart the roles in the classroom and what they entail. The classroom will have visual aids showing these roles. Also, when the class discusses more detailed roles for the project these can be listed in writing for students to see. 5. Which part of the lesson, if any, do you think might need to change? I like the lesson the way it is but I might add a story, book, or even video clip of a classroom doing a project for their school. Since the reading is about a class doing something for their community it would be nice to see a smaller concept as well. 6. When you were writing this lesson plan, what was the most difficult part? I found it somewhat challenging to come up with the assessment for this activity. Since the students will be doing a whole class project I feel like they will understand but to put their knowledge into writing might be difficult. This is why I created an article for them to write. It might be more interesting to act like they are letting people know about the project and their roles.

7. Explain the strategy from Integrating Language Arts & Social Studies that you included in this lesson plan. I incorporated strategy 10 in our text which is incorporating service learning. The students coming up with a project to help their school definitely meets this goal while also meeting the requirement of the standard.

Nevada State College

EDEL 453 - Spring 2014

Karen Powell- Instructor

page 4

Lesson Plan #3 - Civics

submitted by: Michele Arnold

Nevada State College

EDEL 453 - Spring 2014

Karen Powell- Instructor

page 5