2016-2017

LESSON PLANNER

Part 1: Classroom Information

Grade: Kindergarten Content Area: Social Studies Group Size: 32 Lesson Length: 60 minutes


Part 1: Planning for the Lesson
A: Standards

i. Key Content Standard:
HSS.K.6.1. Identify the purposes of, and the people and events honored in, commemorative
holidays, including the human struggles that were the basis for the events (e.g., Thanksgiving,
Independence Day, Washingtons and Lincolns Birthdays, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial
Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day).

ii. Related ELD Standard (must be included when using an ELA Standard):

B. Objectives

i. Learning Objective/Goal: The students will (DO __) to (LEARN ___).

Students will identify the holidays that honor people versus important events and write why we celebrate the
holiday in order to learn the purposes of celebrating commemorative holidays such as Independence Day,
Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, and Columbus Day.

ii. Language Objective (transfer this from "Incorporating Academic Language"):
Students will explain why we celebrate a holiday using prepositions such as because.

C. Assessments:

i. Informal assessment strategies you will use during class (What informal assessment strategies will
you use, what specific evidence will you see and/or hear and how will you note it?)

Assessment Strategy Evidence of Student Learning

Pre-assess students during Circle Map Students share-out what prior knowledge they
activity have about holidays are in general.

Students will be able to identify whether a

certain holiday is honoring a person or event.
Observe student responses and They will be able to explain what a holiday is
discussions throughout the lesson and can state the purpose of the holidays that
are discussed.

ii. Written assessment you will use to determine, for each individual student, to what extent they
have met your learning objectives. (What evidence will you collect?)
Students complete Assessment page 48T6 What is a Holiday. First students are to circle in red the holidays
that honor people. Students then circle in blue the holidays that honor important things that happened in our
countrys past. Finally, students choose one holiday pictured on the page and then write (to their best effort)
why we celebrate this holiday using information they about the holiday, in (1-2) complete sentences.

D. Lesson Resources/Materials (e.g., student handouts, manipulatives, PPTs, text pages, special supplies)
Attach copies of any student handouts or worksheets:
History-Social Science for California: Learn and Work, Teacher Resources, Grade K, Unit 6, Lesson 1 -
(materials pdf p.1-3,8)
Written assessment - (materials pdf p.8)
History-Social Science for California: Learn and Work, Grade K, Unit 6, Lesson 1 student text booklet
p.46-48 (materials pdf p.4-7)
What is a holiday? - circle map (create on butcher paper) (materials pdf p.9)
Calendar with holidays (materials pdf p.10)
Digital photos or dcor of holidays: Fourth of July, Mexico Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial
Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Columbus Day (materials pdf p.11-14)
Holidays honoring events vs. people chart (create on butcher paper) (materials pdf p.15)
Vocabulary cards (materials pdf p.16-18)
Assessment Rubric (materials pdf p.19)
Document camera for the read-aloud

Part 2: Instructional Sequence - Engaging Students in the Learning Process

Introduction (7 min.): Describe how you will 1) make connections to prior knowledge, tap into their
experiences and interests or use a hook, AND 2) let students know what the objective of the lesson is.

Activate prior knowledge: ask students to think about some of the holidays that they might have
celebrated during this past year.
Display pictures and decorations that represent the holidays: Fourth of July-U.S. Independence Day,
Mexicos Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day,
Presidents Day, Columbus Day
o Ask students to guess the holidays the pictures/dcor represent
Tell students the lesson objective: Students will identify the holidays that honor people versus
important events and write why we celebrate the holiday in order to learn the purposes of celebrating
commemorative holidays such as Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Martin
Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, and Columbus Day.
o Support: write the objective on the whiteboard as a visual reference to students. The teacher can
then read and refer back to the displayed objective during the lesson if needed.

Body of the Lesson (55 min.): Describe step-by-step what the teacher and the students will be doing during
the lesson.

Before (10 min):
Circle Map: what they know about holidays
o Invite children to tell what they know about holiday times. Record students' suggestions.
Introduce vocabulary word: Holiday.
o Read and discuss the vocabulary word.
o Display the vocabulary word and definition card on the Social Studies Word Wall
o Informative assessment: assess students on their prior knowledge of holidays and understanding
of the word holiday. Review and make adjustments if needed.
During Whole-class Reading (35 min):
Pass-out the text pages to each student. Use a document cam to present the text to the children as
you read. Ask students to do a picture walk of the text pages before they begin reading as a class.
Read-aloud p.45
o launch the lesson introduction, which asks the question, "What is a holiday?". Tell students a
holiday is a special day. Megan (on the worksheet) celebrates Columbus Day.
o Tell students to turn and tell their neighbor what they favorite holiday is. Ask pairs to share.

o Explain that Columbus Day is a day to remember the explorer Christopher Columbus and his first
voyage to the Americas. Have children circle the way Christopher Columbus crossed the ocean
(children circle the boat)
o Support: reading-aloud and having students follow along will support struggling readers as well as
ELLs access text thats above their reading level. Also have students do a picture walk on each page
before reading which will serve as visual support at the text is read.

Read-aloud informational text printout p.46

o Ask students if they know who the people pictured are on page 46.
o Show children the 12-month calendar and talk about when we celebrate the pictured holidays.
o Talk about the contributions that each person in the lesson has made.
o Ask students how their lives might be different if these people did not make the accomplishments
that they did. For example, ask: what if men and women did not help our country become free?
o Informative Assessment: observe student responses and check for understanding.
o Support: the calendar with the pictured holidays youll be discussing during the lesson with act as
visual support to struggling readers and ELLs and will allow them to visualize when/what time of
year these holidays take place.
o Have children write the holiday they like best on page 46. Tell children that other holidays honor
people too. Memorial Day honors people who gave their lives in any war. Labor Day honors
working people. And Presidents Day celebrates all of our countrys past presidents including
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
o Support: Write one of the holidays in the writing space on the teachers copy to provide support
to those including the ELL and struggling readers who need help spelling and writing the holiday.

Read-aloud p.47
o Discuss the picture on page 47. Have children look for clues in the picture that help identify the
holiday. Have them circle one of those clues. Encourage volunteers to tell how they celebrate
Thanksgiving.
o Tell students the summary of these two pages is that people and events form the basis of our
countrys holidays. Ask why we celebrate holidays. Make a two-column chart on the board. As a
class, list holidays that honor people and events.
o Visual Support: draw a small picture that represents the holiday next to each holidays thats
listed in order to help struggling readers and ELLs to make a connection with the word and the
picture and understand its meaning.
o Language Support: to help all children including ELLs and struggling readers explain why we
celebrate a certain holiday, provide sentence frames. Write on the board: We celebrate ____
because ____. Read aloud the sentence frame on the board and have volunteers suggest ways to
complete the sentence. Read each completed sentence with children.


Read aloud p.48

o Tell children that the US gained its freedom from Great Britain, and Mexico gained its freedom
from Spain. Have children circle symbols of each country in the photographs on p.48.
o Show students the independence vocabulary card and read the definition.
o Tell students that citizenship means the duties and responsibilities that come with being a
member of a community. Show students the vocabulary card for citizenship and place both the
vocab words and their definitions on the word wall for students to see
o Support: the vocabulary word wall serves as a visual support for ELLs and struggling readers
throughout the lesson
o Discuss together how communities celebrate Independence including 4th of July and Mexicos
Independence day.

After (10 min):

Written Assessment
o Give students assessment page 48T6 What is a Holiday. Tell students to think about the
holidays we celebrate in the United States.
o Tell students that first they are to circle in red the holidays that honor people. Students then
should circle in blue the holidays that honor important things that happened in our countrys
past. Finally, students choose one holiday pictured on the page and ask them to write why we
celebrate this holiday.
o Support: provided one-on-one support to struggling readers, the ELL student, and any other
student who is struggling to write their response or complete the task.
o Support-Extension: to challenge advanced learners, after completing the assessment, talk to the
children about the colors they associate with various holidays. Ask them to name other symbols
of different holidays. Tell them to go back to their text and color in the imagines with the color
that they think represents the holiday.

Closure (3 min.): Describe how you will prompt the students to summarize the lesson and restate the learning
objective.
Restate the learning objective to the students: Students will identify the holidays that honor people versus
important events and write why we celebrate the holiday in order to learn the purposes of celebrating
commemorative holidays such as Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Martin
Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, and Columbus Day.
Ask students if there is anything they can add on to What is a Holiday circle map. Add their ideas to the
map.
Tell students that in tomorrows lesson they will be learning more about incredible people in American
history and American legends.

Part 3: Incorporating Academic Language
(to be completed after you have planned the content part of your lesson plan)

1. Describe the rich learning task(s) related to the content learning objective.

Students discuss why we celebrate different holidays and identify which holidays honor people and which
holidays honor events. The teacher records the students ideas and responses using thinking maps.
 Students then use those facts and their conceptual understanding of holidays to complete the assessment
where they write why we celebrate the chosen holiday.

2. Language Function: How will students be communicating in relation to the content in the learning task(s)?
Identify the specific function (purpose or genre) you want to systematically address in your lesson plan
that will scaffold students to stronger disciplinary discourse. The language function will always be a verb.
Some examples are: describe, identify, explain, justify, analyze, construct, compare, or argue.

Explain.
3. Language Demands: Looking at the specific function (purpose or genre) your students will be using, what
are the language demands that you will systematically address in this lesson?
Vocabulary:
Key to this lesson: Holiday, independence, citizenship

Syntax1: students use prepositions such as because in their written responses
We celebrate ____ because ____.
We celebrate ___ to __.

Discourse2: oral discussions around why we celebrate a certain holiday.

We celebrate ____ because ____.

4. Language Objective: What is/are the language objective(s) for your lesson
Note: be sure to copy and paste this into the top of the lesson planner.

Students will explain why we celebrate a holiday using prepositions such as because.

5. Language Support: What instructional strategies will you use during your lesson to teach the specific
language skill and provide support and opportunities for guided and independent practice?

Instruction Guided Practice Independent Practice

During instruction, visuals such as Teacher provides sentence Students explain why we
the vocabulary word cards are frames: celebrate a holiday during share-
used in addition to providing We celebrate ____ because ____. outs as well as independently as
direct modeling of the language. We celebrate ___ to ____. they write their explanations on
The charts including the circle The teacher Reads aloud the the assessment.
map and t-chart are use to sentence frames on the board
introduce the ideas and be used and has volunteers suggest ways We celebrate Presidents Day to
as a resource during discussions to complete the sentence. Each honor past presidents.
and the writing tasks. completed sentence is read with
Teacher introduces the language the children. The vocabulary wall Students can refer back to the
demand and provides sentence is also used to guide students in sentence frames and vocabulary
frames students can use to their discussions and writing. wall if needed.
explain:
We celebrate ____ because ____.
We celebrate ___ to ____.

1
Use of a variety of sentence types to clarify a message, condense information, and combine ideas, phrases, and clauses.
2
Discourse includes the structures of written and oral language, as well as how member of the discipline talk, write, and
participate in knowledge construction.