Core Decisions of Lesson Plan

What
This 45 minute lesson will be taught in front of 25 student kindergarten class. The main
content to be learned in this lesson is the idea of Thanksgiving as a modern holiday and being
thankful. The main learning goals are 1) to learn about and understand the word thankful, 2) to
be able to identify one thing that they are thankful for, and 3) be able to construct a short
sentence about what they are thankful for. The lesson is also inline with Common Core
Standards (outlined below).
How
Students will start thinking about and investigating the idea of Thanksgiving through an
introductory worksheet designed to surprise them and draw them into the lesson. The worksheet
is a draw by numbers worksheet, which means that the final picture is hidden until the children
successfully connect all the dots. The students will then engage in a full class discussion about
the idea of thanksgiving and what thankful means. The teacher will lead the discussion, with
open-ended questions posed to the entire class. Finally the students will complete a writing
activity based on what they just learned. The students will have to complete the sentence, I am
thankful for my using the information they just learned about the word thankful. I plan on
scaffolding the lesson in multiple ways to support their learning. The major scaffolding
activities that will take place 1) are showing where to find numbers for the math portion, 2)
creating a web for the word thankful, and 3) creating a sentence worksheet.
Why
My overarching question looks at how to address all the academic needs and differing
levels within one classroom. While planning this lesson, I decided to use this question and see
what emerged within the lesson. With the help of my classroom mentor, I decided to do a whole
class lesson to better observe how my lesson met the academic needs and differing levels within
the class. The students find the material challenging will be able to take advantage of the
numerous scaffolding activities built into the lesson, in addition to other accommodations such as
rubber grips on pencils for children still developing their fine motor skills. Students who find the
material less challenging will be asked to engage deeper with the material, such as reading the
sentence they created aloud to the teacher. I decided to do a Thanksgiving lesson based on the
time of year and what the students are already learning. Ive limited the scope of the lesson to
modern day thanksgiving and its traditions. I chose to do this because of the large amount of
diversity within the classroom and the fact that some of the children have never celebrated
Thanksgiving. I wanted to first introduce the concept of the holiday before introducing the
history of the holiday.

Lesson Plan
Goals/Objectives
SWBAT what it means to be thankful.
SWBAT understand the word thankful.

SWBAT identify at least one thing (object, person, animal) that they are thankful for.
SWBAT write a short sentence about what they are thankful for.
Standards
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.K.1
Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and
texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.K.2
Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other
media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if
something is not understood.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.1
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they
tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or
preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is...).
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.A.1
Count to 100 by ones and by tens.
Materials and Preparation
Materials
Draw by number turkey worksheet
Writing worksheet
Pencils
Crayons
Preparation
1) Make copies of draw by numbers worksheet
2) Create the writing worksheet write a sentence starter I am thankful for and put a
line on the bottom of a piece of paper.
3) Make copies of writing worksheet
Learning Environment and Management Issues
This lesson will take place in the main classroom. The students will be sitting at the
regular seats at their tables. The classroom will be in its normal set up. I am keeping the
classroom in this set up because the students are familiar with it and comfortable within the
space. The materials needed for the lesson will be passed out by the teacher (worksheets) and by
the table captains (pencils, crayons).
Any management issues will be taken care of using the consequence system already in
place. If there is conflict between two students, one student may need to be moved: this is also a
previously established behavior management system, it allows students who have problems
keeping their hands within their space more space.
Plan
1) Hook (approx. 10 mins)

Each student will be given a Draw By Numbers Turkey Worksheet and asked to
complete it Follow the numbers on the worksheet in order to complete the
drawing.
o Before the worksheets are passed out the teacher will tell the students that
the final picture is a secret, so once they figure it out, they have to keep it
a secret.
o For scaffolding purposes, the students will be reminded about where to
find numbers around the room, in case they can not count above 10 or
need help.
Number Line at the front of the room up to 100
On their name tags
After a majority of the students have finished I will ask them what they think the
picture is. What is this picture?
o If the students cannot correctly identify the picture, give clues about what
they eat on Thanksgiving.
Link this picture to Thanksgiving by talking about how eating turkey on
Thanksgiving is a modern tradition. Discuss the holiday of modern Thanksgiving
in America. What do you do on Thanksgiving?
o Its a holiday in November.
o You usually have a big meal with your family.
o You eat turkey.
o Highlight how not everyone in America celebrates Thanksgiving briefly
discuss the differences in America (mirrored in our classroom) and how
there are many people with different backgrounds here, who might not
celebrate the holiday
2) Body of the Lesson (approx. 35 mins)
Introduce the word thankful and assess their prior knowledge
o One of the main reasons we celebrate Thanksgiving is to show and talk
about how we are thankful.
o Do you know that word?
o What does it mean?
Read the book Thanksgiving is For Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland to
give concrete examples of what giving thanks and being thankful is
o Whats happening in the story?
o What are the children giving thanks for?
o What do you think that means?
o Why do think that?
If the students do not know the word, break it down into two parts on the white
board thank/ful (even if some students were able to correctly identify and define
the word this is still a useful exercise for the students that dont know the word).
o Read the thank out loud and ask them if they know what that word
means thank you, do you know that phrase?
o Elicit more in-depth answers, asking when they use the word thanks and
why the use it
o Ask the students again what they think thankful means
Start a word web with thankful in the center on a large piece of paper

o Write my own example of something Im thankful for on the web

o Ask for examples from students, Can you think of things you are thankful
for? and write them on the web
o What about examples from our story that we read earlier?
Explain the next activity, writing a sentence about what we are thankful for:
What are you thankful for?
o Highlight that they only have to do kid writing and Im not expecting
them to be able to do adult writing terms previously explained in
class
o The students are allowed to use one of the examples that we wrote on the
whiteboard or they can think of one of their own
o After they finish their sentence they need to raise their hand so that I can
check it and they can move on to the next activity making a hand
turkey on the worksheet
Explain how to draw a hand turkey on the white board
Send the table captains to get pencils ONLY and pass out the worksheets
When the students finish and show me their sentence I will send them to get
crayons for their table and they can start on their hand turkey.

Assessment of the Goals

The assessment of this lesson will be informal and consist of teacher observation and the
creation of student sentences. Both the sentence creation and the introduction of the word
thankful put the cognitive load on the students. It is the students responsibility to identify what
they think thankful means and what they are thankful for. This makes it obvious to the teacher
whether or not the students have learned the content of the lesson.
The sentence creation is a slightly more formal assessment as the students will be writing
(emergent writing) and will give the teacher a better idea of who understands, especially for the
students that did not talk much during the whole class discussion.
Anticipating Students Responses
One student response I expect for this lesson is students to bring up the traditional
narrative of the pilgrims and Indians. I purposely left out the history of Thanksgiving, choosing
instead to talk about modern traditions and how its a time to be thankful. My response to that
would be to acknowledge it and say this lesson is about Thanksgiving today, but thank you for
bringing that up.
I expect another response to be that students either dont know what a turkey is, they
dont know what Thanksgiving is, or they dont know what the word thankful means. My
response to these questions would be to ask them if they could figure it out with my help/clues or
with their friends help. If they still dont know, I will explain the idea again. If a lot of the
students dont know what a turkey is, I will bring a picture up on one of pieces of technology in
the classroom.

Accommodations
For students who find the material too challenging

Some of the students may find the material, especially the writing portion to challenging.
Some students already have accommodations, large pencils with rubber grips, that they will be
using. For other students who say they have problems thinking of ideas to write about I will tell
them to ask their friends for help, which is an established routine in the classroom, and to think
about the ideas we wrote on the board. If the students have problems physically writing the
words I will dot out the first few letters, being sure to ask them what letters they think makes up
the word.
For students who may need greater challenge or finish early
If the students finish making and coloring their hand turkey I will ask them to read their
sentence aloud to me. I will them tell them to go back to the first worksheet (the draw by
numbers turkey worksheet) and tell them to color the turkey.