Lesson Plan

St. Thomas the Apostle School

November - December 2007

Grade: 2

Teacher: Miss Kimberly Miller

Subject: Language Arts, Social Studies

Unit: Early American History

Language Arts Standards:

Standard 1: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding.

Standard 2: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for literary response and appreciation.

Social Studies Standards:

Standard 1: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understandings of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States and New York State.

Key Idea 1: The study of New York State and United States history requires an analysis of the development of American culture, its diversity and multicultural context, and the ways people are unified by many values, practices and traditions.

Standard 3: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live – local, national, global – including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surfaces.

Students:

¨ study about how people live, work, and utilize natural resources

¨ draw maps and diagrams that serve as representations of places, physical features, and objects

¨ locate places within the local community, State, and nation; locate the Earth's continents in relation to each other and to principal parallels and meridians

¨ identify and compare the physical, human, and cultural characteristics of different regions and people

Ability to Locate and Identify on a Map, Globe:

¨ Neighborhood

¨ Local places

¨ Local landforms and waterforms

¨ The U.S. – Political

¨ Other urban, suburban, rural communities

¨ World communities (continents, oceans, poles, hemispheres)

Ability to Orient a Map:

¨ Cardinal directions

¨ Symbols represent places, geographic features, and characters

¨ Lines of latitude and longitude, special parallels, meridians

¨ Special relationships of world communities can be described by direction, location, distance, and scale

Description of Unit:

This 6 week unit about Early American history integrates language arts and social studies. Students will read about and discuss the lives of Native Americans and the Early American colonists. Our sources of information will be a packet of informational handouts, November issues of Scholastic News, trade books and multiple copies of the National Geographic Explorer (May 2007). Students will learn to use information in written text to answer questions in complete sentences; continue to develop geography skills and compare and contrast their lives to early Americans. Some hands-on activities such as baking cornbread and making butter will be included.

Assessment:

Daily teacher observation during instruction will take place. Students will be assessed for an increased ability to answer questions in writing independently. One written end of unit test will be administered.

Report Card: Appropriate Social Studies and Language Arts will be given

Social Studies: Daily 45% Participation 15% Testing 40%

Language Arts: Writing

Homework Assignments and Help from home:

Written social studies homework will be assigned at least twice. Completed class work will be sent home in the social studies folder (containing the informational packet) for parents to view. Parents are asked not to remove anything from the folder, but to return everything to school the next day. Family discussion and interest about children in other places will enhance learning.

You can contact me at: sta2miller@yahoo.com

http://www.homestead.com/millergrade2 - click on Social Studies

St. Thomas Writing Rubric for the Primary Grades

	Emergent	Developing	Proficient
clear message
varied sentences
invented spelling
spells correctly
logical sequence
sent structure
capitalization
ending marks
Content

GEOGRAPHY CHECKLIST FOR SEPTEMBER

Locate and Identify on a USA Map	Yes, Independently	With Prompting	Not Yet
¨ New York
¨ Georgia
¨ Atlantic Ocean
Locate and Identify on a Map of North America	Yes, Independently	With Prompting	Not Yet
¨ The United States
¨ Canada
¨ Atlantic Ocean
Ability to Orient a Map:	Yes, Independently	With Prompting	Not Yet
¨ Cardinal directions
¨ Symbols represent places, geographic features, and characters

GEOGRAPHY CHECKLIST FOR OCTOBER

Yes, Independently With Prompting Not Yet

Ability to Locate and Identify on a Bethlehem Map

¨ St. Thomas the Apostle

¨ Local places

Ability to Locate and Identify on a USA Map

¨ New York

¨ Georgia

¨ Alabama

¨ Florida

¨ Atlantic Ocean

Ability to Locate and Identify on a Map of North America

¨ The United States

¨ Canada

¨ Atlantic Ocean

Ability to Locate and Identify on a World Map

¨ The United States

¨ North America

¨ Australia

¨ Atlantic Ocean

¨ Pacific Ocean

Ability to Orient a Map:

¨ Cardinal directions

¨ Symbols represent places, geographic features, and characters