Group Composition:
~ There will be seven groups of three. Students will be put into groups with a method of using Popsicle sticks. Teacher will pull out three names at a time and those three students will be in one group. If a student is absent, teacher and place extra student in appropriate groups.
Addressing the Social Skill with Students:
~ Teacher will talk to students about what it means to work together. After discussion have students role-play in front of the class with good model of students working together and a mad model of working together. Have each group come up with an example and have the rest of the class guess if it is showing students working well together or poorly together. After the role playing have students talk about what they saw in each and what were some of the differences. (Extension- teacher and make a chart with how the social skill looks and how its sound. Teacher can do this with the students.)
Teacher Monitoring of Social Skill during Group Work:
~ Teacher will be walking around the room as groups are working to gather information. Teacher will meet with each group to help them along with the group work. At the end of each day students will have a check list that they need to complete and hand into teacher. This will help teacher keep track of where each group is and also can assess what they are gathering.
Objectives:
~ Students will show different types of United States holidays through presentation.
~ Students will demonstrate working together with other classmates in groups.
~ Students will be able to identify the dates of the different United States holidays.
NY Core Curriculum:
~ People living in urban, rural, and suburban communities celebrate various holidays.
~ Standard 5: Civics, Citizenship, and Government:
Materials:
~ Bulletin Board ~ Markers ~ Colored paper ~ Scissors ~ Glue/tape ~ Books from Library ~ Internet
Professional Resource:
~ KU Medical Center (2007) CY 2007 National Holidays United States. http://www3.kumc.edu/diversity/national/national.html.
~ Stockholm (2007) United States Embassy Stockholm United States and Swedish Holidays 2007. www.usemb.se/Holidays.
Time: This lesson will take about 3-4 days during Social Studies to complete.
Procedure:
1. Teacher will start lesson asking how many students enjoy when they have off from school? Then teacher will ask if anyone knows why we get days off from school? Talk about how there are different holidays that we celebrate and because we celebrate it we get a day off from school.
2. Begin talking about what are some United States holidays that we celebrate but do not really know too much about. (Stay away from Christmas, Valentine�s day, Halloween, St. Patrick�s Day etc.)
3. Then start talking about what students are going to be doing. State that student will be working in a group and each group is going to get a United States holiday. Ones that are not really known and students are going to research and gather information and then do a presentation on their holiday.
4. Talk to students about working together with other students and how this activity is going to help us with this social skill of working together. Have students write down good things and bad things about working together, then break them into group and have them demonstrate good and bad examples of working together and then have the rest of the students guess to see which example it is.
5. Example to each student that you will be watching and taking notes as to how they are all contributing to the work.
6. Teacher will then pick Popsicle sticks out and form seven groups of three. Each group will then get handed a Holiday. (Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Independence Day, Flag Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.) Students then are free to get together with group members and start looking up information about their topic.
7. Students can use the Internet, go to the library or bring in books from home.
8. Teacher will be walking around and assessing those who are working well together in a group and those who might not be. Teacher will also be around to answer questions or ask questions to students
9. Once students have gathered information, Students will work together to put together a display board of the information they found to be shared with the whole class.
10. Once everyone has completed their display boards, students will give presentations about what they learned about their holiday. Students will also share what were some of the skills they used (did they all look up the information or did one do it while others goofed off? Did they all agree on the same ideas or not?) State to students that it is okay if sometime you were not mastering the skill, it is especially hard sometimes to come up with just one idea or all agree on something, but you should never raise your voice at that person or hit that person. You need to talk to that person like you talk to me.
11. Teacher will talk once more about the importance of working together is going to be in the future and then ask students to write down one thing that they liked about working together.
Closure Acitivity:
1. Teacher will then talk about what were some of the interesting facts that students learned today from these presentations. (that these holidays represent more than just days off from school)
2. Hand out a work sheet that students have to state one fact about each of the Holidays that they learned.
Assessment:
~ Students will be handed a worksheet that they have to complete and they have to state one fun fact that they learned about each activity and also write down what day that holiday is.
~ Teacher will also share some observations that she saw while students were working together.
