Lesson Plan #1

Grade: 3rd Social Studies Strand: Geography

Submitted By: Christi Schlack

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

Lesson Plan #1 What is a Community?

B. Summary of the Lesson Plan:

submitted by: Christi Schlack

This lesson is designed to introduce students to what a community is and how a community works. Students will read Ch. 1 What is a Community, in the Houghton Mifflin Social Studies book for 3rd grade, to better understand the concept. C. Basic Information: Grade Level:3rd grade Time to Complete this Lesson:50 min Groupings: whole group reading of the chapter and working individually to complete the circle map assignment.

D. Materials: pencils books circle map E. Objectives: o NV State Social Studies Standards o G6.3.2 Identify characteristics of neighborhoods and communities. G6.3.4 List ways people views their communities. I can describe communities around the world and the individuals that contribute within them.

Student-Friendly Standards

F. Vocabulary Community: place where people live, work, and play together. Law: rule that tells people how to behave. Citizen: official member of a community.

G. Procedure: 1. Teacher will discuss the pre-reading strategy of reading and have students take out their book: Houghton Mifflin Social Studies for 3rd grade. 2. Students will open their books to chapter 1 (pg.6) and skim the chapter, finding anything that might help describe what the chapter will be about. 3. Teacher will call on students randomly and have students explain in whole group what they think the chapter is going to be about based off of the subtitles that they read.
Nevada State College EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor page 2

Lesson Plan #1 What is a Community?

submitted by: Christi Schlack

4. Teacher will assess prior knowledge by discuss what community means to the students and how and what their community is like. 5. Students will popcorn read the chapter pages 6-9. During reading, stop when you get to bold faced words and discuss the definitions. (Ex: what kinds of people live in a community?) 6. Teacher will sum up the reading by asking questions based off of the bold faced vocabulary works to have students practice summarizing the reading. 7. Students will then create a circle map, with community written in the middle, and draw/write 10 things or people that make up a community.

8. Teacher collects circle maps for assessment. H. Assessment: What will you use to measure student understanding? I will collect their circle maps and access their knowledge, from the lesson, on what kinds of things they put down to describe a community and the people within it. Explain how you will know students understand the concepts from the lesson. I will know students understand what a community is and the contributions it takes to run a community, by the citizens, by evaluating the circle map my students turned in to me. I will also be informally accessing the students during the closing of the lesson by asking individuals certain questions pertaining to the content. I. Closure: Teacher will close the lesson by having students share what a community is and the kinds of things that they see and find within a community. Teacher will call on students randomly to answer the questions.

J. Reflection: 1. Which part of the lesson do you think will be the easiest for you to teach? The easiest parts of the lesson would be the popcorn reading from the chapter. This is due to the fact that the question to access the students understanding of the chapter are readily available in the book. 2. Which part will be most challenging for you to teach? Most challenging is to have the students really understand that many people and things make up a community. 3. How will you follow up or extend this lesson? I will follow up the lesson by continuing the chapter readings which contain poems and stories about people working together in a community. This will help the students by providing more examples.
Nevada State College EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor page 3

Lesson Plan #1 What is a Community?

submitted by: Christi Schlack

4. What can you do for students who dont grasp the concepts? Students who dont grasp the concept will be pulled back whole group and we will go over the definitions and chapter again to hopefully clear up any confusion. 5. Which part of the lesson, if any, do you think might need to change? The part that I might change up is the opening of the lesson. I thought about using a KWL chart to tap into the students prior knowledge a little more. 6. When you were writing this lesson plan, what was the most difficult part? Most difficult part was trying to engage the students in the beginning.

Nevada State College

EDEL 453 - Spring 2014

Karen Powell- Instructor

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