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Home PLN 8 Main Page Megan Lum Josephine Pacheco Sarah Randall Jamie Palmer Rachel Beck

=The American Symbols = A Lesson Plan for 1st/2nd Grade Social Studies



Click [|HERE] for the American Symbols Lesson Plan Summary: This lesson plan teaches young students about the different American symbols. It starts off by having the students describe to you what they believe a symbol is and listing off what they think are the different American symbols. The overall objective of the lesson plan is to teach the students about the symbols that are unique to our country and to teach them about what a symbol is. This project discusses four of the main symbols: [|The American Flag] , [|American Bald Eagle]  , [|Liberty Bell] and //[|The Star-Spangled Banner] // . Each symbol has its own activity to go along with it. Not only are the students doing an interactive activity about each of the symbols but they are learning about them as they go along. While they are working on the projects they will be generating facts about each symbol that the teacher will write down and put up on the board for them to remember. At the end of this lesson they should be able to recall what the symbol looks like, facts about the symbol and much more.

**Megan's Response: ** I feel that students will respond well to this lesson because it incorporates of a lot of artwork. I liked this lesson because the artwork ranged each day. Students get to use construction paper, brown paper bag puppets, and paint. They will be very excited when they get to take home their folder and show their artwork to their family. However, the lesson did seem very repetitive with reading books about the symbol, writing what they learned about the symbol, creating the symbol in art, then reviewing facts on the second day. I feel that students may become a bit bored with the routine by the end of the last symbol. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">

I agree with Megan, this lesson is very well put together and think students will enjoy working on all the art projects. I especially like the idea of each student making a folder to keep all the symbols in. Because this lesson seems so long I it would be beneficial to have an activity at the end to sum everything up. This could be a small play where the class briefly enacts the history of the symbols. The class could be split in to groups and each group would choose a symbol. For example students could reenact the french giving the Status of Liberty to America. A play would give the students a feeling of accomplishment and pride because they could invite their parents to attend.It would also increase their retention levels of the meaning and history of each symbol.
 * Josephine's Response:**

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105.3%;">Learning about symbols that are unique to our country is very important. I believe that this lesson would be very effective for the students because it explains the symbols in depth and then asks for the students to generate facts and sentences that comprehend to what they just learned. What I like most about this lesson is that in some ways, it’s very repetitive. Repetition will help the students retain important information on all of the symbols. I like how this lesson introduces both art and writing into a fun, interactive unit in social studies. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 117%;">
 * Jamie's Response:**

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">This lesson plan seems very well organized and easy to use in a younger aged classroom. I like how the activity provides a basic explanation about the four main symbols of America that many of the other activities failed to touch on. The teacher could extend this activity by asking students to take on the role of an American symbol to allow a more interactive learning experience. For instance, instead of writing out the facts in sentences, the students could role play in groups with each student acting as an American symbol. Each of the groups would then be asked to present in front of the class to help engage the entire classroom and wrap up the lesson.
 * Rachel's Response:**