Integrated Social Studies Lesson Plan
Julia Szabo
Integrated Lesson Plan • 5th Grade
State Standards
Social Studies
Make connections to relevant current events
S1, S2 - Concept 10: Contemporary United States, Concept 9: Contemporary World PO1. Describe current events using information from class discussions and various resources (e.g., newspapers, magazines, television, Internet, books, maps).
PO 2. Use various resources (e.g., newspapers, magazines, television, Internet, books, maps) to discuss the connections between current events and historical events and issues.
Reading
S3C1PO1. Identify the main idea and supporting details in expository text
S1C6PO4. Use graphic organizers in order to clarify the meaning of the text.
Content Objective
You will consider why the population has grown so quickly and generate problems created by the growing population by finding the main idea and supporting details of an expository text.
Language Objective
You will read aloud and then agree upon a details and generate a main idea with a partner
Vocabulary
Population, main idea, supporting details
Materials
• SmartPresentation – (includes resource maps and embedded npr video)
• Scholastic News magazine
• Main idea graphic organizer
• T chart for problems/solution
The Why
• To consider our planets capacity to hold people
• To become readers who can find the most important part of an article
• To analyze the role of government and individuals in limiting negative impacts of population growth
Anticipatory Set
Teacher will show the number 7,000,000,000 (billion) on the smart board and ask students to make connections to and predictions about this number
• Give additional facts about the number that students will hear/read in magazine/video throughout lesson
– It would take 220 years to count to 7 billion of you count one number per second
– You could walk around the Earth 100 times if you take 7 billion steps along the equator
Lesson
Do Now: What makes the Earth unique or different from other planets? What impact do humans have on our planet?
Introduce objectives: Today we will read and discuss the growing population of the Earth and consider the problems that this growth poses for our planet
Introduction: We just finished studying the planets of our solar system – we are now going to focus in on the Earth.
• What makes the Earth unique or different from other planets?
• What positive and negative impacts do humans have on our planet?
Earth is unique because it can sustain life – we now have 7 billion people on Earth.
• Watch CNN Student News clip (November 1st)
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/31/studentnews/sn-transcript-tue/index.html
Graph of growth – Why such a huge jump recently?
• Students make connections to prior knowledge and make predictions of what changes occurred to increase the population
Can we grow forever without a cost? Visualize this growth and consider the Earth’s carrying capacity
• NPR
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141816460/visualizing-how-a-population-grows-to-7-billion
We have discussed and watched Now lets read! To become experts on something it helps to read, listen, watch and discuss
Review Reading Content Vocabulary: Supporting detail, main idea, problem
-Review definitions studied in reading class (we departmentalize so generated student definitions learned from Ms. Blakslee)
• Remediation: Students may use class created definition
• Extension: Student will take own notes and extend definitions in own word
Students will be put in pairs to and given a magazine, a copy of the article (to highlight) and a graphic organizer page that on one side is main idea/supporting detail and the other is a problem/solution t-chart
Preview: Teacher and students will preview magazine article – headings, illustrations, graphic, and quote
Model: T will model reading a paragraph and selecting/highlighting details to put into support detail portion of graphic organizer (magazine pulled up through Scholastic Interactive)
• Once details from paragraph are selected – teacher writes a main idea of the paragraph that combines aspects of all of the details
Practice
Students read the next paragraph aloud with their partner. Stop to highlight and select important details to put into graphic organizer – then generate paragraph’s main idea
• Share out as a class and consider strengths and weaknesses of student generated main ideas – are they broad enough to fit all of the details?
After full class feedback is given students continue working with partner to repeat this process with the final two paragraphs.
• Remediation (partnered with a higher student)
• Extension (student main ideas are at a higher/more complex level)
T will walk around room monitoring and questioning students about details they have selected and main ideas that they have created.
Closing: STOP AND THINK: So if you had to summarize this article or give your main idea for the entire article what would it be?
- Write at the top of your entire graphic organizer (under Main Idea of article), share with table in round robin format – call sticks to share out big idea
• Preview upcoming unit: We will be working in our coming Science unit to better understand why humans are negatively impacting our planet by using certain kinds of resources and propose solutions to these many problems.
- We gathered a lot of information today about population growth today – what problems do you think this growth will cause? You may pull this directly from your graphic organizer or other ideas you have
• Generate anchor chart of problems as a class to post – students add to problem side of T-chart graphic organizer to revisit
Assessment
Assessment: I will collect and look over student graphic organizers – looking for broad enough main ideas – looking specifically at the main idea for entire article
Self-Reflection
1. What were you trying accomplish in this lesson?
I wanted to create a logical bridge from our study of the Solar System and to our upcoming science unit on global warming, natural hazards and solutions to these problems. I heard this story on NPR and thought to myself what a great way to make our study of human impacts on earth very real and relevant. Discussing the enormous growth of the human population created a sense of urgency and purpose among my students in thinking about the problems this creates and solutions to these problems. The focus on main idea/supporting details gave them much needed practice on this vital reading skill – which my co-teacher has been emphasizing all semester.
2. To what extent did you accomplish it?
I feel very successful in my goal of investing my students in our new unit through this lens of population growth. Students were fascinated by our discussion of population growth and were ready to jump to the solution finding stage. I want to keep this idea in the forefront as we discuss the science behind global warming and resource use so that they have a clear why for our upcoming learning. This social studies lens has inspired me to add a week to the unit about worldwide resource use so that it is clear just how many resources Americans use.
3. What were your lesson strengths? Weaknesses?
One of the strengths is that it was clear that they were able to understand the content and connect it to their lives – they were full of questions and very invested. Students did a great job of pulling out details and formatting it into their graphic organizers but some of my students struggled to connect these details into original main ideas for each paragraph. I realized that writing their own main idea is a great way to see if they are understanding and synthesizing the information. I think that I should have modeled creating this main idea from the supporting details collected again or done an additional guided for this final step for my lower level students.
4. What effects did your literature-based lesson generate for you and your students?
This lesson gave students the opportunity to show me all that they had learned in reading and to apply their knowledge of main idea and supporting details to a paragraph level – actually generating the main idea not just finding it in the text. They love Scholastic News and the combination of science, reading and current events was new to them. The combination of video, discussion and reading gave the lesson variety and really ensured that they soaked up the information. I too often focus on a video, powerpoint presentation, discussion format in science because of limited time but I think that for some students it wasn’t until they read the article that they truly processed the information.
5. What did you learn about your teaching from this experience?
I learned that using integrating current events and reading into science is very valuable and increases student investment in what we are studying. It made me realize that I can easily sync the reading we do in science with expository text standards. It is challenging to integrate all of the different aspects when I only have 40 minutes to teach Science each day. I also worry that my science instruction is too language focused and not investigative/experiment oriented enough – so that is something for me to continue reflecting on/balancing.
Integrated Lesson Plan • 5th Grade
State Standards
Social Studies
Make connections to relevant current events
S1, S2 - Concept 10: Contemporary United States, Concept 9: Contemporary World PO1. Describe current events using information from class discussions and various resources (e.g., newspapers, magazines, television, Internet, books, maps).
PO 2. Use various resources (e.g., newspapers, magazines, television, Internet, books, maps) to discuss the connections between current events and historical events and issues.
Reading
S3C1PO1. Identify the main idea and supporting details in expository text
S1C6PO4. Use graphic organizers in order to clarify the meaning of the text.
Content Objective
You will consider why the population has grown so quickly and generate problems created by the growing population by finding the main idea and supporting details of an expository text.
Language Objective
You will read aloud and then agree upon a details and generate a main idea with a partner
Vocabulary
Population, main idea, supporting details
Materials
• SmartPresentation – (includes resource maps and embedded npr video)
• Scholastic News magazine
• Main idea graphic organizer
• T chart for problems/solution
The Why
• To consider our planets capacity to hold people
• To become readers who can find the most important part of an article
• To analyze the role of government and individuals in limiting negative impacts of population growth
Anticipatory Set
Teacher will show the number 7,000,000,000 (billion) on the smart board and ask students to make connections to and predictions about this number
• Give additional facts about the number that students will hear/read in magazine/video throughout lesson
– It would take 220 years to count to 7 billion of you count one number per second
– You could walk around the Earth 100 times if you take 7 billion steps along the equator
Lesson
Do Now: What makes the Earth unique or different from other planets? What impact do humans have on our planet?
Introduce objectives: Today we will read and discuss the growing population of the Earth and consider the problems that this growth poses for our planet
Introduction: We just finished studying the planets of our solar system – we are now going to focus in on the Earth.
• What makes the Earth unique or different from other planets?
• What positive and negative impacts do humans have on our planet?
Earth is unique because it can sustain life – we now have 7 billion people on Earth.
• Watch CNN Student News clip (November 1st)
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/31/studentnews/sn-transcript-tue/index.html
Graph of growth – Why such a huge jump recently?
• Students make connections to prior knowledge and make predictions of what changes occurred to increase the population
Can we grow forever without a cost? Visualize this growth and consider the Earth’s carrying capacity
• NPR
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141816460/visualizing-how-a-population-grows-to-7-billion
We have discussed and watched Now lets read! To become experts on something it helps to read, listen, watch and discuss
Review Reading Content Vocabulary: Supporting detail, main idea, problem
-Review definitions studied in reading class (we departmentalize so generated student definitions learned from Ms. Blakslee)
• Remediation: Students may use class created definition
• Extension: Student will take own notes and extend definitions in own word
Students will be put in pairs to and given a magazine, a copy of the article (to highlight) and a graphic organizer page that on one side is main idea/supporting detail and the other is a problem/solution t-chart
Preview: Teacher and students will preview magazine article – headings, illustrations, graphic, and quote
Model: T will model reading a paragraph and selecting/highlighting details to put into support detail portion of graphic organizer (magazine pulled up through Scholastic Interactive)
• Once details from paragraph are selected – teacher writes a main idea of the paragraph that combines aspects of all of the details
Practice
Students read the next paragraph aloud with their partner. Stop to highlight and select important details to put into graphic organizer – then generate paragraph’s main idea
• Share out as a class and consider strengths and weaknesses of student generated main ideas – are they broad enough to fit all of the details?
After full class feedback is given students continue working with partner to repeat this process with the final two paragraphs.
• Remediation (partnered with a higher student)
• Extension (student main ideas are at a higher/more complex level)
T will walk around room monitoring and questioning students about details they have selected and main ideas that they have created.
Closing: STOP AND THINK: So if you had to summarize this article or give your main idea for the entire article what would it be?
- Write at the top of your entire graphic organizer (under Main Idea of article), share with table in round robin format – call sticks to share out big idea
• Preview upcoming unit: We will be working in our coming Science unit to better understand why humans are negatively impacting our planet by using certain kinds of resources and propose solutions to these many problems.
- We gathered a lot of information today about population growth today – what problems do you think this growth will cause? You may pull this directly from your graphic organizer or other ideas you have
• Generate anchor chart of problems as a class to post – students add to problem side of T-chart graphic organizer to revisit
Assessment
Assessment: I will collect and look over student graphic organizers – looking for broad enough main ideas – looking specifically at the main idea for entire article
Self-Reflection
1. What were you trying accomplish in this lesson?
I wanted to create a logical bridge from our study of the Solar System and to our upcoming science unit on global warming, natural hazards and solutions to these problems. I heard this story on NPR and thought to myself what a great way to make our study of human impacts on earth very real and relevant. Discussing the enormous growth of the human population created a sense of urgency and purpose among my students in thinking about the problems this creates and solutions to these problems. The focus on main idea/supporting details gave them much needed practice on this vital reading skill – which my co-teacher has been emphasizing all semester.
2. To what extent did you accomplish it?
I feel very successful in my goal of investing my students in our new unit through this lens of population growth. Students were fascinated by our discussion of population growth and were ready to jump to the solution finding stage. I want to keep this idea in the forefront as we discuss the science behind global warming and resource use so that they have a clear why for our upcoming learning. This social studies lens has inspired me to add a week to the unit about worldwide resource use so that it is clear just how many resources Americans use.
3. What were your lesson strengths? Weaknesses?
One of the strengths is that it was clear that they were able to understand the content and connect it to their lives – they were full of questions and very invested. Students did a great job of pulling out details and formatting it into their graphic organizers but some of my students struggled to connect these details into original main ideas for each paragraph. I realized that writing their own main idea is a great way to see if they are understanding and synthesizing the information. I think that I should have modeled creating this main idea from the supporting details collected again or done an additional guided for this final step for my lower level students.
4. What effects did your literature-based lesson generate for you and your students?
This lesson gave students the opportunity to show me all that they had learned in reading and to apply their knowledge of main idea and supporting details to a paragraph level – actually generating the main idea not just finding it in the text. They love Scholastic News and the combination of science, reading and current events was new to them. The combination of video, discussion and reading gave the lesson variety and really ensured that they soaked up the information. I too often focus on a video, powerpoint presentation, discussion format in science because of limited time but I think that for some students it wasn’t until they read the article that they truly processed the information.
5. What did you learn about your teaching from this experience?
I learned that using integrating current events and reading into science is very valuable and increases student investment in what we are studying. It made me realize that I can easily sync the reading we do in science with expository text standards. It is challenging to integrate all of the different aspects when I only have 40 minutes to teach Science each day. I also worry that my science instruction is too language focused and not investigative/experiment oriented enough – so that is something for me to continue reflecting on/balancing.