POWERFUL SOCIAL STUDIES LESSON PLAN OUTLINE

JMU Elementary Education Program: ELED 434 ALL SECTIONS

Micaela Powers
Mrs. S. Yoder, Plains Elementary
5th grade
11/28/18

A. TITLE OF LESSON:
Civil War Somebody

B. CONTEXT OF LESSON –
This is an appropriate activity for my students because they have been learning about the civil war for a few weeks. The
began learning about what lead to the Civil War, such as differences between the North and the South and southern states
succeeding. During this, they have been hearing names of the people deeply involved in this conflict and while they have heard the
names and know a little, they do not yet know much about these people and what role they played in Civil War. I know this because
during my pre-assessment my students were able to tell me about how the Civil War started, who it was fought between, why they
were fighting and so on. They rarely, if at all, brought up, people who were involved in these doings. When I asked and tried to
phrase questions to get people as the answer, my students were unsure of exactly who did what and why it really mattered. It was
when I finally began naming people and asking if they remember them, people like Harriet Tubman and Abraham Lincoln, they
were recalling those people. And they knew a little about them, they knew they had to do with what went on and they even knew a
little bit about what they did. But I think it shows how little they understand the people’s true importance. Which is why my lesson
will be a good way to make these connections. My lesson, having the students become experts on these people of interest will
increase their knowledge about the Civil War, why it happened, how it happened the way it did, who fought for what, and why
these people had such large impacts on the US we live in today. My students like being active while they learn. If they sit in their
seat and stare a teacher for too long, they begin to lose focus, so I will be having my students learn through investigation today.
They will be tasked with finding the information about their assigned Civil War somebody around the room and using that
information to become experts on said person and writing a speech about them to present to the class. I know this lesson is
developmentally appropriate for my students because they are actively seeking out their own learning and they are learning through
speech and language as well. Lev Vygotsky believed that “children were active partners in their own learning” (Children’s services,
2010). He also believed that verbal thinking, participation, and the role of language all play a huge role in children being active in
their learning (Children’s services, 2010). My students are doing just this; they are taking learning into their own hands. While I am
providing with the information, it is their job to use that information to tell a story and understand it. They are also seeing it, writing
it, and then speaking it, so they are using language and other aspects of learning to gain this knowledge.

C. RATIONALE
 Something that has really made more sense to me as I have grown up is that everything that happens with our world is
controlled by somebody. Someone is affecting everything that happens, for example the President, congress, senate etc, make laws
but also people protest them and they stand up for themselves and all of these things impact how our country functions. As a child,
I did not understand that aspect of the world, I was taught and I learned what happened but I don’t remember being taught why or
who decided and what other people did because of it. That is why I think this lesson is so important for students right now. It is
going to show them that people made choices that lead to what happened with the Civil War.
I think it will also show students that they are allowed to fight against and not agree with things that happen. Which I think
right now is a very important lesson to teach because I want my students to know they do have a voice that they can use to protest
and they can use to say no, and can work to make things right. I had to make this lesson around people built into the curriculum
already, but we still heavily focus on people like Harriet Tubman and John Brown who wanted to help slaves and free them. This
will show the students they do not have to sit by and watch things they disagree with happen.

D. RELATED VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING (and related NATIONAL STANDARDS)

Virginia Sol, Social Studies, Virginia Studies
Civil War and Postwar Eras
VS.7 The student will demonstrate an understanding of the issues that divided our nation and led to the Civil War by
a) explaining the major events and the differences between northern and southern states that divided Virginians
and led to secession, war, and the creation of West Virginia;
b) describing Virginia’s role in the war, including identifying major battles that took place in Virginia; and
c) describing the roles of American Indians, whites, enslaved African Americans, and free African Americans.
NCSS, College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards
D2.His.3.3-5.
Generate questions about individuals and groups who have shaped significant historical changes and
continuities.
D2.His.4.3-5.
Explain why individuals and groups during the same historical period differed in their perspectives.
D2.His.6.3-5.
Describe how people’s perspectives shaped the historical sources they created.

E. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Understand –
Students will understand that it
was people who drove the Civil
War to its fullest extent and those
Know – Do –
Students will know the people Students will be able to describe
who lead the war on both the how people affected the Civil War.
North and South. SWBAT identify some significant
 people all had different feelings
and beliefs that lead them to make
the decisions they did.
Students will know people who people who impacted the war and
fought for slaves and worked to identify an important part they
set them free, abolitionists. played.
Students will know people who
who in the government had affect
on the war.

F. ASSESSING LEARNING:
What will your students do or say, specifically, that indicate every student has achieved your objectives? Remember—every objective must be
assessed for every student!
Task:
Students will write a biography about their
specific Civil War person and present it to
the class (or group).
Diagnostic features:
I will look for each student
to identify the specific
information about the
person such as their role in
the war, who they were,
what they did etc.
Support:
I will support students by
making the information they
are seeking readily available
to them. I will also assist in
helping them write and
making their connections
meet the paper.

Task: Diagnostic feature: Support:

Students will listen to their peers present
their biography about what they have
learned and will then take a Quizziz that
tests their knowledge of the people of the
civil war.
I will look for each student
listening to each presented
respectfully as well as
paying attention to the
information presented. I
will also be able to see the
Quizziz results to identify
what students are or are
not understanding.
I will support students by
writing down key ideas
about each person presented
on and asking students to
recap what they learned as
well so the students can
reiterate what they learned
and others can hear it more
than once.

G. MATERIALS NEEDED
Facts around the room – provided by myself
Papers that guide the students to the facts – provided by myself
Paper to write their biography – provided by myself
Chromebooks to take Quizziz – provided by the school, students have them all day.
 H. PROCEDURE
Activity Element Procedures and management
& Time (in minutes)
Introduction  We have been learning about the
1-2 mins civil War, can someone remind me
why the Civil war started?
 So, it was people who made the
Civil War start?
 And lots of people who played
roles in it?
 Today were are going to become
experts on those the people!
 The people who started, ended,
fought, were freed, were not freed
during the civil war because they are
the reason it all happened.
Event 1  I will explain that to become
5 mins experts today we are going on a
scavenger hunt for facts/information
about our specific person. We are
going to use that information to write
a biography about them and share it
with the class so they can be experts
too.
 I will explain that I will be
assigning people randomly and you
will know which facts to collect based
on the color or pattern on your paper.
Those facts belong with your person.
 I will show them an example of a
biography I have written about one of
the people (will not be included in
Students
 Students will be interacting with
me about previous knowledge they
have about the Civil War to activate
prior knowledge and understand why
we are about to learn about these
people.
 Students will be listening so they
know what to do during this lesson.
Academic, physical, social &
linguistic differentiation,
resources, and support

 I will be able to assign
students to people I
know they are able to
handle. Some people
have more facts or can
be harder to
understand and I will
be able to give my kids
who struggle with
reading and writing the
person with the least
facts and the person
who I have a pre-
written biography for
that needs to filled in.
 activity) so they have an idea of what
to write.

Transition  Students will wait for me to hand  Students will wait to get their 
1-2 mins them a piece of paper with their assigned person and begin their hunt.
assigned person and they will then
begin their scavenger hunt (which I
will have set up while they were at
lunch/recess).
Event 2  I will walk around assisting  Students will be collecting their  I will be giving heavy
5 mins students while they collect facts and asking for help when assistance to my
information about their Civil War needed. students who need it,
person and make sure they are all making sure they are
correctly taking the right clues. able to locate the clues
accurately.
Transition  I will begin telling the students to  As students begin to collect all  I will biographies
1 min when most write their biography using the facts facts, they will know because it will mostly filled out for
students are back to their they just found about their person. say on their sheet how many to find, some of my students,
seats. they will head back to their seats and they will just have to
begin writing. transfer a few key
words from their fact
sheet to the biography.
Event 3  I will walk around assisting  Students will write their  Same as above while
10 mins students in their writing. biographies. helping them as they
need it.
Transition & Event 4  Once students are done writing, I  Students will read biographies  Students can elect to
1 min will tell them we will be reading our  Students will listen to classmates read their biography or
15/20 mins biographies to the class read biographies have me read it.
 Next I will call students up by
person, to read their biographies.
 2 or 3 will be read for each
person which is perfect because the
students will be receiving the
information more than once.
 I will shortly debrief each person
Transition  I will tell students we will be  Students will get their chrome 
1 -3 mins testing our knew expertise and we books out and open Quizziz on their
 will need to get out our chrome computers
books and open Quizziz
 I will reassure students this is a
fun way to see what we know, not a
grade.
Conclusion: Students will take Quizziz on  Students will take Quizziz on  I will assist students in
5-7 mins chromebooks. chromebooks. reading questions
when needed.

I. DIFFERENTIATION:
A large part of my lesson is finding, reading, and writing about information I am giving to the students. I know I have a few
students who struggle to read and find it better to be read as well as writing to so for this accommodation I will help those students
by offering assistance as well as creating biography templates and giving them specific people that go along with it so that they can
focus on the information and less on writing and reading aspect. This will make it so the key information they need is emphasized
and they can copy down word for word what is missing from the template. For my students who are fast writers and will be done
writing very quickly, they will be able to use their chromebooks to find more information about their person or they can use their
chromebooks to do an online activity I will provide.

J. WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THIS LESSON AND WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT?

One thing I am worrying about going wrong is that the students may not want to present in front of the class their
biographies. Usually the students are good about participating about talking to each other but I am nervous that because it is new
information they will be uncomfortable or nervous, so I put in my plan that if I notice this happening I will read some, but I don’t
want to read them all because this is supposed to be the students being experts and learning for themselves. So, if this happens I
may break out the dollars my CT uses in her classroom and over whoever reads their own expert biography gets a dollar because
they wrote them, they are the experts, so they should teach the class.
Another thing I am worried about going wrong is the time. We don’t have that long of a time allotted for social studies but I
want to fit this whole lesson into one day so I will have to be making sure that things are running smoothly and we are staying on
schedule. Of course, if we do need more time for certain parts of this lesson, I will not try and force students to rush. If we are
running out of time we will not do the final Quizziz at the end of the lesson.
The social studies period is also the last of the day and last time I did a lesson at this time (my science lesson) by the end of
it the students were over it. They could see the busses pulling up in the windows and they were antsy, I could see this so I had to cut
the lesson and make the assessment an oral one. If something like this happens during this lesson and the students are tired and
antsy and tired of siting I might let them move around and take the Quizziz somewhere else in the room or maybe, I will put it up
on the screen and we will take it together as a class.
Another thing that could happen is my students might have trouble writing the biographies. I know they know what these
are because I have seen them read them and describe them to my CT. But if they have trouble I can put up the biography I write on
 the screen as a guide. The biographies are not to be very long, maybe 4-5 sentences and they already have the information in front
of them so I’m hoping this goes smoothly but we will see what happens and work around it.

Work cited:

Children’s Services. (2010). Child development theorists. Retrieved November 12, 2018, from
https://sielearning.tafensw.edu.au/MCS/CHCFC301A/12048/chcfc301a/lo/12020/index.htm
 Lesson Implementation Reflection – after lesson

As soon as possible after teaching your lesson, think about the experience. Use the questions/prompts below to guide your thinking. Be
thorough in your reflection and use specific examples to support your insights.

I. How did your actual teaching of the lesson differ from your plans? Describe the changes and explain why you made them.
Because of the time restraint, which I was aware of from the beginning, I encouraged the students to use the facts I gave them for the
biography and just change the “I”s to “He” or “She’s” because I know my students and they would want to spend so much time making
the facts into their own words, which is great, but we did not have the time for that. We also only had one student from each person
read their biography to save time. I also ended up color coding each Civil War person and their facts to make it easier for the students
to find, so if they had Abraham Lincoln, he was Red so they were taking the red fact from the location the fact was found.

II. Based on the assessment you created, what can you conclude about your impact on student learning? Did they learn? Who learned?
What did they learn? What evidence can you offer that your conclusions are valid?
Based off the assessment, my students learned a lot about the person who they became an expert on. I expected this, which is I had
them sharing their biography with the class, however, we did not have time to have multiple read so they each heard the about the other
people only once. Overall, I think they learned and they took away the most important details away from each person.

III. Describe at least one way you could incorporate developmentally appropriate practice in a better or more thorough way if you were to
teach this lesson again.
Next time, I would maybe change this lesson slightly and make it a think pair share so they are sharing what they learn with groups or
even a gallery walk. This was, everyone is able to learn more about the other people during the civil war as well. So they could all still
become an expert because I think that my students really liked that idea and they liked being called experts, but then they can have the
opportunity to teach to their classmates in a different way like through a gallery walk or sharing with small groups.

IV. Based on the assessment data you collected, what would you do/teach next if you were the classroom teacher?
If I were my CT, next I would have them continue to learn about these people but I would begin to put them in perspective of the Civil
War so they are directly learning about the people and what happen during the Civil War. So I would begin to introduce battles and
emphasize the generals because they are already familiar with the generals so this will spark more interest because they already have
knowledge about it, they are not going into it blind.

V. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about young children as learners?
This reinforced that children are so willing to try new things. Children as learners want to feel validated as well while learning so
walking around, talking to them and making sure that they know I wanted them to learn was really important.

VI. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about teaching?
 For me, planning and teaching this lesson reinforced all the different aspects that you have to think about and take into account while
planning and implementing lessons. Especially in someone else’s classroom. I had to work around the way my CT teaches as well as
work around the way I know my students learn as well as how I want to teach.

VII. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about yourself?
This reinforced that I want my classroom and my lessons to be engaging and active. The students loved being able to move around,
especially after they had been sitting for all of math. I want my students to want to learn more from my lessons. It felt so good to see
my students questioning more about the people they were learning about and that they were all proud enough of their biographies to
want to read them to the rest of the class.