Lesson Plan 4- Thankfulness

Objectives

 Students will learn the importance of being thankful.

 Students will learn how to express what they’re thankful for.

Anticipatory Set

What holiday is coming up? Thanksgiving! Why do you think the holiday is called
Thanksgiving? What does it mean to be thankful? When we are thankful, it means we
show others that what they’ve done or given us makes us happy. It is important to show
others that we are thankful for what they do for us, like our parents, our siblings, our
teachers, and anyone who helps us or does something nice for us. So today, we are
going to read a story about being thankful, and then we are going to start an activity
together. You will finish this activity with Mrs. Burke in the computer lab later. For now,
I need everyone’s listening ears ready, and everyone paying attention to thankfulness in
the story.

Procedures

1. Read children’s book about thankfulness, Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks, by

Margaret Sutherland
2. Discuss ways that we saw thankfulness in the story
3. Explain the ‘turkey’ thankfulness sheet that they will be completing, show my own as
an example
4. Have each student share 1 thing from their turkey that they are thankful for

Closure

I hope that the story we read, and the turkey, helped you think about some things that
you are thankful for in your own life. It is really important, not just on Thanksgiving, but
everyday that we say thank you. We should always tell people thank you and let them
know that we appreciate what they have done to help us or make us happy. I have a
challenge for you, I want you to thank at least 5 people today for something they have
done for you. We can spread Thankfulness every day.

Assessment
Thankfulness Turkey handouts

Lesson Reflection:
For my last lesson with this group of students, I could not have had a better topic or outcome. I
really enjoyed teaching this lesson. Mrs. Burke showed me the Turkey worksheet that she’s used
in the past for a thankfulness lesson. She said in past years they’d had discussions about what it
means to be thankful, and would create their turkeys. I decided to read a text to help ‘spark’
some ideas about what it means to be thankful. The text I chose was a really simple one that I
had in my book collection, but it was a really great way to bring up the conversation of being
thankful every day, not just Thanksgiving. I ended up having a lot of fun teaching this lesson. My
students had so many fun things to say about being thankful. I think the text was appropriate for
the lesson, and I think our conversation went really well. The timing was perfect as well. Mrs.
Burke was happy with how it went, and was thankful that I was able to get them to come up with
a variety of things for the turkeys so that they weren’t all the same. If I were to change anything,
I might have had them refrain from coloring to save time, but it ended up working out. Overall,
this was probably my second favorite lesson to teach, aside from the Halloween lesson. I really
enjoyed my time with this class. I’m going to miss this ‘wise’ group of first graders.