Unit Plan: The News in the Community

Lesson Plan for Monday

Grade: 2nd
Social Studies Strand: History
Submitted By: Courtney Donnelly


EDEL 453: Teaching Elementary School Social Science
Nevada State College Spring 2014
Instructor: Karen Powell
Lesson Plan for Monday Strand: history submitted by: Courtney Donnelly

Nevada State College EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor page 2
B. Summary of the Lesson Plan:
In this lesson, I will introduce the idea and importance of the news to the students. We will
discuss as a class all the different types of things where we can get news about the
community from.
C. Basic Information:
Grade Level: 2
nd
grade
Time to Complete this Lesson: 50 minutes
Groupings: whole group during discussion and small group during worksheet
D. Materials:
smartboard
newspaper
paper & pencils
E. Objectives:
o NV State Social Studies Standards
H3.2.6A Read and discuss news events in the community.
o Student-Friendly Standards
I know how to read and talk about the news in my neighborhood.
F. Vocabulary
Newspaper an item to learn about whats happening in the world.
Magazine a fun way to display different news articles and pictures.
News important events that happen in a day.
G. Procedure:
1. Ill start off the lesson by having the students look through a newspaper for seven
minutes to become familiar with looking through it and what it entails.
2. After the seven minutes is up, I will call on a handful of students to share what story they
found interesting or what about the newspaper they like.
3. After letting the students go through the newspaper, I direct my students attention to
the online newspapers.
4. I show them that there are plenty of websites (nytimes, lvrj, etc.) that is out there to find
community or global news in an instant.
Lesson Plan for Monday Strand: history submitted by: Courtney Donnelly

Nevada State College EDEL 453 - Spring 2014 Karen Powell- Instructor page 3
5. After browsing the website together as a class, I will put the students in groups of four
where they will go back to looking at the newspapers in the classroom.
6. The students will work as a group to answer random questions about the newspaper on
the worksheet like: where is the glossary? How many people are pictured on page [ ]?
And so on.
H. Assessment:
What will you use to measure student understanding?
By watching the students work in their groups, Ill be able to see if they understand how
to point out things from a newspaper.
Explain how you will know students understand the concepts from the lesson.
The answers from their worksheet will give me a great understanding of the students
knowledge from the lesson.
I. Closure:
Ill ask the students what they like most about the newspaper and remind them that
well be working on the newspapers again tomorrow.
J. Reflection:
1. Which part of the lesson do you think will be the easiest for you to teach?
I think the easiest part of the lesson is just having the students go through the
newspapers and getting to know it.
2. Which part will be most challenging for you to teach?
I think just having the students become excited about newspaper is quite a
challenge. I dont think they think of the word fun when they hear the word news.
3. How will you follow up or extend this lesson?
Im going to have the students make their own newspaper as a whole class. Each
student will have their own job so they can see everything that goes into making a
newspaper.
4. What can you do for students who dont grasp the concepts?
I can make sure I bring in different models of newspapers so that they can see that
every state or city has a different way of displaying news.
5. Which part of the lesson, if any, do you think might need to change?
I might need to change the procedure since it doesnt really flow like I want it to.
6. When you were writing this lesson plan, what was the most difficult part?
The most difficult, like always, is seeing what I wanted to actually teach.