Career week

Ashleigh Diefenbach

First Grade

Common Core Standards:

Maps can be used to locate and identify places.

Places are distinctive because of their physical characteristics (landforms and bodies of water) and human
characteristics (structures built by people).
Diverse cultural practices address basic human needs in various ways and may change over time.
Lesson Summary:

Students take on different roles each day to learn more about countries geographical, historical, and cultural
attributes.

Estimated Duration:

Day one: 45 minutes

Day two: 35 minutes
Day three: 20 minutes
Day four: 30 minutes
Commentary:
My approach to this lesson is that each day the kids get to discover a new career through learning about the
country. My hook to the students is the theme day of each lesson. My biggest concern is that the leader
students will do all the work and the followers will just watch in the background. To combat this I will go
around to each group as they are working and have each student participate.
Instructional Procedures:
Day 1: Kids will be placed into a few groups depending on the size of the class. For the purpose of this, we
will say four groups with five kids in each group. On day one each group will be assigned a country Ireland,
Germany, Scotland, and France. They will then look up their country on google earth to see where it is in the
world. Then once everyone has looked at their country we will come back together as a class. Each group will
then point out where their country is on a world map. This will be called "geographer day" and it will have 45
minutes for this part of the lesson.
Day 2: On day two I will set up QR codes on each country linking to a YouTube video about the history about
the countries. Each group will watch the videos and then individually come up with a few sentences describing
the similarities and differences of the country. This will be "historian day" and each video is 5 minutes and one
is 10 so this will take about 35 minutes to watch all the videos and write sentences.

Day 3: The kids will go back on google maps and look around to see any landmarks. Keeping an eye out for
lakes, forests, oceans, ect. They will make a tally of how many land marks they see. Finally we will come
together and compare the types of landmarks found within our country. This will be called "explorer day" this
will take about twenty minutes.
Day 4: Pictures from each country culture will be put into a power point, and as a class we will go through the
power point. Then as a class we will create a ven diagram to compare and contrast the cultures of each
countries. This will be called "archchologist day" and will take about 30 minutes.

Pre-Assessment:
Before the start of the "career days" we will discuss a bit about each country, what languge they speak, and I
will see if any of the kids know any information about the country. Also when groups decide their country I
will find out why, have they seen it in a movie, read about it in a book, ect.
Scoring Guidelines:
As a teacher I will listen to the students to identify what they already know. Also what country a group
chooses can also play a role, because if a group chooses a country they are familer with they may know
more about it than another country.
Post-Assessment:
All the little written assignments, group work, and whole class work will be taken for their "post assessment"
grade. There is group work, and individual work that will be considered when grading. Finally I will create a
small test over the matirial we covered over the course of the four days.

Scoring Guidelines:
For group work: was the student participating? Was the group work of good quality? Was there an
obvious effort put into the work? If students fulfill this they will get full credit on the group work
aspect.
For individual work: Was the response a thoughtful one? Was the work relevant to the content? Did the
student show an understanding of the content? If students fulfill this they will receive full credit.

Differentiated Instructional Support

Students who are doing well can choose to do an extra credit essay over their country. Essentially pulling
everything we have worked on into one paper.
If students are struggling I will provide extra recourse and other means to demonstrate their learning.

Extension
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C
Linked above is a playlist to the crash course world history playlist. Crash course is a youtube channel of
educational videos made by John and Hank Green. Srudents who are intrested in history should look into these
videos to learn more about the history of the world.

Homework Options and Home Connections

When students are at home point out things from other countries. When reading Madeline point out the setting
is in France, or read the magic tree house books to students. They take place all over the world and during
different time periods, and point out where the book is set on a map while reading the book.

Interdisciplinary Connections

In this lesson there is a lot of writing. There is also a good amount of comparing and contrasting which is a
skill of English. Through doing these social studies classes there will also be a lot of talk of cultural diversity
which may not be a subject still is an important thing to understand.

Materials and Resources:

For teachers Smart bored, map, QR codes, pins.

For studentss Laptop(for google earth), Ipad (QR), paper, pencils, good attitude.

Key Vocabulary
Geographer, archaeologist, explorer, historian, and culture
Additional Notes

Have fun friends!