Social Studies Lesson

Community Helpers

Objective:

Learning about community helpers, such as police officers, fire fighters and hospital workers, and taking community field trips will help students understand how they fit into their community and the world.

Materials:

Our Family Trip of National Symbols

• pictures of national symbols laminated and glued onto posterboard
• a light/plain tablecloth
• paint and paint brushes
• markers
• a medium-sized card board box

Our Community Helpers

• books, pictures, and hats representing community helpers.

The Lesson:

Invitation to Learn

Our Family Trip of National Symbols: The teacher will draw a basic road map (using markers) on the tablecloth and write “U.S.A.” at the top (ahead of time). The students will help the teacher make a car out of a cardboard box (ahead of time) large enough for a child to stand in and hold up. The students will sit in a circle around the tablecloth while the teacher describes what a tourist is, what U.S.A. stands for, and reads the books The Best Vacation Ever and National Symbols. Pictures of national symbols (that have been glued and laminated onto poster board) will be placed face up on the tablecloth. The students will be asked to pick a picture and hold it face down in front of them until the tourist is at their stop. Each child will be given a turn to go on a trip of national symbols while driving the cardboard car. The car will stop at each symbol, as the teacher talks about the symbol. After a few road trips, some children will be able to tell the tourist about their own symbol.

Instructional Procedures

Our Community Helpers: Teacher Resource Book—Hi, Neighbor–Projects and Activities about our communities. Read the books People Who Keep Us Safe and Picture Me Grown Up. Choose books that represent the community helpers in your area. Use pictures, props, hats, dress up clothes, miniature dolls, etc., to depict these helpers to the students.

The Wrap Up:

After a classroom visit from a community helper the students will write a journal entry about how helpers help the community. They will also write what they learned about in this lesson.

Learning Strategies:

This is a cooperative learning strategy that gets the students involved in what is going on in their community.


 

Kindergarten Science Lesson

What is the Weather?

82°F | °C

Sun

Mon

Tue

Wed

Partly Cloudy

Wind: W at 12 mph

Humidity: 54%

88°

66°

86°

70°

86°

73°

84°

66°

 

Objective 

At the end of this lesson the students will be able to:  

Communicate how weather affects people.

Classify objects according to how they are used.

Observe and record weather data using symbols.

Materials 

Copy of the book What Will the Weather Be Like Today? by: Paul Rogers

A bulletin board display upon which weather data may be recorded

A collection of seasonal objects such as mittens, sandals, boots, a raincoat, a beach ball, sunglasses, an umbrella, a scarf, a swimsuit, etc.

One piece of drawing paper for each student

Crayons 

The Lesson

• Engage the children in a discussion of ways in which the weather influences their lives. Ask specific questions that address common weather phenomena of New York, such as: What do you do when it gets cold outside? Do you do different things in winter than in summer? What do you do during a thunderstorm (snowstorm, rainy afternoon)?

• Say: Weather is what the air outside is like; it is always changing.

• Ask: What kind of weather do you like best? (Allow several children to respond. Ask why they like that particular kind of weather.)

• Following the discussion, read What Will the Weather Be Like Today? Discuss how the weather in the book affected the people or animals of the story. Guide children to conclude that weather affects people.

• Display the collection of seasonal items. Hold up each item in turn, and ask the children to identify it. Ask the children to help you categorize the items into different groups. Put all the items used on warm, sunny days in one group. Put all the items used on a cold day in another group. Put all the items used on rainy days in the last group. Discuss how the weather affects the items people use and the clothes they wear.

• Draw the students' attention to the bulletin board you have set up. Explain the symbols you have chosen to represent the daily weather. Select a student to record today's weather on the bulletin board. Explain that just as the weather changes daily, the bulletin board must be changed daily. Tell the children that you will select another student to record the weather for tomorrow. 

The Wrap Up 

Distribute drawing paper to the children. Instruct them to draw a picture of themselves dressed appropriately for warm and sunny weather and performing a warm-weather activity. On the other side of the paper, children should draw a picture of themselves dressed appropriately for cold weather and performing a cold-weather activity. 

Learning Strategies 

The strategies used in this lesson are cooperative and individual. This lesson as a group lets children grasp the idea of the lesson then when they draw the picture how they look in different seasons show if they understand by themselves. 

Resource

(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cstone.net/~bcp/K/KMrSci.htm 

Rogers, Paul. What Will the Weather Be Like Today? New York: Greenwillow, 1990. 

MATH BY SORTING

The Objective - Sort two-dimensional shapes

The Materials -

• Math manipulative shapes (square, circle, triangle, octagon, trapezoid, and hexagon).
• Crayons
• White construction paper
• Brown paper bag
• Sorting mat

The Lesson - 

1. To start the lesson teacher willhold up a paper bag filled with shapes. Teacher will ask  the students to gues whats inside the bag.
2. Have students reach into the bag and pull out one shape at a time, naming the shape, and telling something about the shape.
3. Teacher will read aloud the following problem:
   " Sif has new stickers in the shapes of squares, triangles, circles, and rectangles. How can Sif choose to sort her new stickers onto 2 pages?"  
4. Give students an assortment of shapes to use to sort on the sorting map.
5. Teacher students the following questions: "How many vertices do the squares and rectangles have?  How many vertices do the triangles have? How many vertices do the circles have?"
6. Have student follow the directions: "Listen to my sorting rule. Sort the shapes into 0 verticesand more than 0 vertices."
7. Now sort the shapes into 3 vertices and not 3 vertices.
8. Now sort the shapes into 4 vertices and not 4 vertices.Draw shapes on the construction paper. 
9. Reread the orginal problem to the students and see  how they sort accepting reasonable sorting rules. 

The Wrap - Up - Have the students review the shapes and the vertices each shape has. Review how we can sort the shapes.

The Learning Strategies - This is a cooperative learning activity as the class completes this activity as a group and learns about sorting.

The Objective of my lesson is to teach the students rhyming words and gain knowledge of real and nonsense words. 

The Materials needed for this lesson are the book There's a Wocket in my Pocket! by Dr. Seuss, chart paper, paper, and pencils.

The Lesson will be as follows:

1. The teacher will read the story aloud to the students in a group.
2. As a group the class will discuss what they believe the style of the book is (rhyming).
3. The teacher will give an example, on chart paper, the rhyming words found in the book.
4. The students will then return to their seats and write words that rhyme. 

The Wrap-up will be the group discussing what they learned and sharing their own rhyming words.

The Learning Strategy used in this lesson is both Cooperative as the students identify the rhyming word from the story and Individual as they must come up with their own rhyming words at their seats.