Unit 5 – Characters and Celebrations: LP1 - Tet

Date: Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Teacher Name(s): Alida Maravi
Grade Level(s): 2nd Grade
Content Areas: Math, English/Language Arts, Social Studies
Timeline of the 1:00pm – 2:10pm
Lesson:

Description/ Abstract of the In this lesson, students will be introduced to the holiday celebrations for
Lesson: the new year across many cultures. In particular, the lesson will focus
on the Vietnamese New Year (Tet) and the Chinese New Year.

Goals of the Lesson

Content Objectives/ goals:
Social Studies - Students will be able to recognize that the lunar New
Year is celebrated not only in Vietnam, but in China as well, and that
some of the traditions surrounding this holiday are the same and some
are different by comparing online photo series and videos with scenes
from each celebration.

ELA - Students will be able to chart a character’s traits throughout a

story as well as what he or she is doing.

Math – Students will be able to solve basic addition word problems by

recognizing that the word “and” indicates that they should add.
Language Objectives: Social Studies – Students will be able to use their English Language
skills to state what people do during Tet and the Chinese New Year after
looking at pictures and videos online.

ELA – Students will be able to listen to a picture book read aloud and
then complete a T-chart about what a character in the book is doing and
his or her character traits using a phrase bank.

Math – Students will be able to restate or paraphrase basic operations

read in addition word problems, referring to pictures of everyday objects
(e.g. “Ten pencils and ten more are twenty.”)

Links to Standards: WIDA –

• ELP Standard 2: The Language of Language Arts
o Match Visuals of characters, places or objects with oral
statements form illustrated pattern or predictable books
o Describe people or objects in titles and illustrated covers
of fictional stories with a partner in L1 or L2.
o Describe people or places depicted in story pictures or
wordless picture books in small groups or pairs.
o State actions of characters or describe events depicted in
story pictures of wordless picture books in small groups
or pairs.
o Describe characters or settings of stories from picture
books.
• ELP Standard 3: The Language of Mathematics
 o Restate or paraphrase basic operations from oral
statements, referring pictures of everyday objects (e.g.
Ten pencils and ten pencils more are twenty).
DCPS –
• Social Studies
o 2.1.2 – Locate the continents, regions or countries from
which students, parents, guardians, grandparents, or other
relatives or ancestors came to Washington, DC.
o 2.5.1 – Distinguish traditional food, customs, sports and
games, music from other countries that can be found in
the U.S. today.
o 2.5.2 – Describe beliefs, customs, ceremonies and
traditions of varied cultures, drawing from folklore.
• English/ Language Arts
o 2.LT – U.1 – Identify major and minor characters in
several stories.
o 2.LT – F.7 – Describe the characters’ traits in a story
o 2.LT – C.4 – Make relevant connections between earlier
events and later events in text
o 2.IT – E.2- Answer questions about text heard or read
• Math
o 2.NSO-C.11 – Demonstrate the ability to use
conventional algorithms for addition and subtraction.

Essential Questions Social Studies – How do people celebrate holidays around the world?

ELA – How should beginning readers think and talk about characters?

Math – How do we know when to add two (or more) numbers?

Essential Vocabulary • dance
• “make music”
• fireworks
• buy
• cook
• He/She
• and
Learning Connections We will start the lesson by discussing the Vietnamese holiday, Tet.
Because all of the students in this class are Vietnamese, this will
hopefully trigger their prior knowledge of a holiday that they have
celebrated at home, as well as increase engagement. After having this
general baseline understanding of what holidays and celebrations are
(both difficult concepts/ vocabulary words in English to understand for
Level 1 ELLs) students will hopefully be able to recognize that there are
many different holidays and traditions celebrated all over the world (we
will refer to a world map to help students grasp this concept). Because
we have already started talking about characters I will refer to picture
books we have read in the past (with similar predictable patterns) in
order to remind students of comprehension strategies we have already
learned about. We will work on math everyday (as a warm-up) so that
comprehending basic word problems becomes routine and students can
 feel confident when they see these word problems in their general
education classrooms. We will integrate all content areas covered in
each lesson with the unit theme (celebrations) by using the same
vocabulary throughout different points in the lesson. For example, when
working on math word problems, we will use vocabulary from the books
we will read during that lesson. This will hopefully make all aspects of
the lesson relevant and reinforce the learning of new vocabulary.

Assessment
Content Assessment(s) Social Studies – Check for Understanding – After reading picture books
together and looking at pictures online, can students tell the teacher
where each celebration takes place? (In this case we will be talking
about Vietnam and China).

ELA – Students must complete a T-Chart, of events on one side and

character traits on their other, independently, after having filled in a
couple of the lines together as a class.

Language Assessment(s)
Math – Students will be given one basic word problem with the word
“and” to be completed by themselves.
Social Studies – Check for Understanding – Determine if students can
tell teacher what people are doing in different pictures of people
celebrating the lunar new year.

ELA – Check to see if students are using proper sentence frames,

pronouns and character trait vocabulary, provided in wordbanks with
visual support, to fill in their T-Charts (ex: “He is lonely”).

Math – Give students a series of mathematical operations pictures (ex:

an addition sign, a subtraction sign, a division sign, etc.) and ask
students to hold up the operation they should use when they see the
word “and.”

Learning Activities or Tasks

• Warm Up
o Read objective
o Date – ask someone to raise their hand and dictate the full date while teacher writes it on the board.
o Popcorn reading – Students and teachers will do a popcorn reading of the book Ten Mice for Tet by
Pegi Deitz Shea. This easy to read picture book shows many of the different traditions from the
Vietnamese holiday and will get students warmed up for social studies, reading and math (since it is
also a counting book).
o Math practice –
 Read “Adding” poem together, asking students to help fill in the blanks with two digit
numbers (this poem is printed in a large poster format which is laminated so blanks filled
with dry erase markers).
Today I’m adding __ and ___,
It’s ____, it’s ______.
Today I’m adding _____ and ______,
It’s _______, it’s ______,
Today I’m adding ____ and ____,
 Adding numbers is so much fun,
Today I’ve learned that ____+______ is ______.
 Point out that in the poem the words “and” and the “+” sign are used interchangeably. Give
students post-its with different mathematical operations (including the plus sign for addition)
and then ask them to hold up the operation that they are supposed to do when they see the
word “and.”
 Have the following addition problem printed on poster paper – “On Tet, An eats 4 rice cakes
(bánh chu’ng) and Ms. Maravi eats 11 rice cakes. How many rice cakes do they eat
altogether?”
• Work through the problem together and have a student write the addition equation on
the board then ask all students whether they think their peer is wrong or right. Then,
make any necessary corrections.
• Have this word problem also printed on poster paper (or white board): “On Tet, Vu
has 19 red envelopes and An Khanh has 17 red envelopes. How many red envelopes
do they have in total?” Ask students to write the equation and answer on white
boards. Check answers and make any corrections necessary.
• Theme work/ “front loading” for Read Alouds
o Technology connection: In order to introduce the lunar new year holiday, students will view videos
of new year celebrations in Vietnam and China online. Teacher will stress that the lunar new year is
celebrated in many Asian countries. Before showing each clip, teacher will show students on a map
where each clip takes place (for Vietnam, student volunteers can show teacher, since they know
exactly where it is).
 Fireworks, Chinese New Year - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/jan/26/chinese-
new-year-fireworks
 Tet, dragon dance -
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/801359/vietnam_lunar_new_year_dragon_dance/
o Discussion – teacher will ask students what the people are doing in each video. After they respond
teacher will introduce important vocabulary for the lesson (which will be depicted in pictures).
• Character Analysis (ELA Standards):
o Introduction to new material:
 Teacher will show students the T-Chart graphic organizer on the board and tell them that the
column labeled “events” asks the reader to write what the character is doing. Teacher will
further explain that the column labeled “Character Traits” asks students to refer to their list of
words that describe characters (each student has an individual laminated board with words
like “happy” “lonely” “curious” along with visual representations of these words) and write
sentences such as “He is lonely”.
 Teacher will show students how to fill in the graphic organizer using the book Ten Mice for
Tet, read during the warm-up.
o Guided Practice:
 Teacher will read aloud the book The Runaway Rice Cake by Ying Chang Compestine,
stopping during reading to check for students’ understanding.
 After reading the book teacher will ask students what holiday the characters are celebrating
and where they are celebrating (the answers are respectively, the Chinese New Year and
China).
 Students will identify the main character of the book and teacher will write the character’s
name on the board.
 Teacher will show students one picture at the beginning of the book and will ask students
what the main character (Da) is doing. Once they respond, teacher will write this as a correct
complete sentence in the “events” column. Teacher will then ask students to choose a word
from their “Character Traits” boards (laminated sheets with character traits and graphic
 representation of that word – see LP1, WS1) that describes the character in that specific
picture. Teacher will write their responses in a complete sentence in the “Character Trait”
column of the T-chart.
o Independent Practice and Assessment:
 Teacher will hand out a worksheet with the T-chart on it (in the same format) and ask
students to fill the example on the board in on their worksheets. There will then be 2 blank
rows that students will be asked to fill in independently. Because there is only one copy of
the book read aloud, students will each have a timed 2 minutes with the book initially and
can ask to see it again throughout the independent work time.

Materials and Resources

• Adding poem poster
• Books:
o Ten Mice for Tet by Pegi Deitz Shea
o The Runaway Rice Cake by Ying Chang Compestine
• Poster paper with printed math word problems
• Individual white boards
• Technology: laptop and desktop computers, head phones
• Vocabulary picture wordcards
• Worksheet with T-chart on it (LP1, WS1)

Lesson Evaluation and Teacher Reflection (for completion after the lesson)
What were some successes and challenges of this lesson? What may you consider modifying in the future?