Joe Lindsay

Lesson Plan for Kindergarten Social Studies

Topic: What makes a community?
Essential Understandings:
-

Communities require lots of people working together to function

People work different jobs for different reasons

Essential Questions: (What question(s) will students grapple with as they learn through this
lesson?)
-How do people help their community?
-What are different ways people define their community?
-Why do people work different jobs?
-Why is cooperation necessary for a successful community?
Primary Content Objectives:
Students will know: (facts/information)
-

Definitions: Career, Contribution, Cooperation, Community

Roles of different jobs in a community

Students will understand: (big ideas)

-

Communities require lots of people working together to function

People work different jobs for different reasons

Students will be able to do: (skills and behaviors)

-Match descriptions of work that people do with the name of the job
Related state or national standards: (Examples include State Standards of Learning, Common
Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards or National Curriculum Standards for
Social Studies)
- Virginia SOLs for History and Social Studies
- K.6: The student will match simple descriptions of work that people do with the
names of those jobs.
-K.8: The student will demonstrate that being a good citizen involves
b) taking responsibility for certain classroom chores

Joe Lindsay
g) participating successfully in group settings.
Assessment: (How (and when) will students be assessed? What evidence will you collect to
determine whether students have met the lesson objectives? Will the assessment(s) be a preassessment (diagnostic), formative (ongoing feedback) or summative?)
-

Pre-assessment: I will present a series of questions on the topic of community that relate
to my non-fiction read-aloud choice to try and gauge students understanding of the topic
as well as to get students thinking about concept before we start reading.
o Can anyone tell me something they learned at the fire station?
o So fire fighters help their community, what are some other jobs that help the
community?
Formative assessment: I will develop a series of questions throughout the book to have
students identify aspects of community in the books.
o Pg. 3: Do you remember some of the tools you saw at the fire department on your
field trip? Can you tell me about a few of them?
o Questions pertaining to the specific jobs in the book (e.g. Does anyone recognize
what tool this is? What job requires using this tool? How does this job help the
community?)
Summative assessment: I will have the students do an activity where they match labeled
pictures of tools with the appropriate career. I will then have the students label their pairs
with a sentence about the career (e.g. firefighters help put out fires.)

Materials and Resources: (List here all materials that you will need in order to successfully
teach this lesson. Include technology and website links, texts, graphic organizers, student
handouts, physical manipulatives, etc.)
-

The book: Cooper, S.K. (2006). Whose tools are these?: A look at tools workers use
Big, sharp, and smooth (Whose is it?: Community Workers). Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Picture Window Books.
Handout of photos with different tools/scenarios that the kids can cut out
Handout with the pictures and names of the different jobs written out
Scissors

Key Vocabulary and Definitions:

-

Career: A job that an adult for a long time

Contribution: The work that people do when they are helping do something
Cooperation: Helping one another
Community: A group of people who live and work in the same area

Lesson Procedures:
-

Introduction and goal orientation:

Joe Lindsay
-

Today we are going to be reading a book about different jobs and some of the
tools that the people who do the job use.
There are a lot of different jobs that people can work in to help their
community.

Connecting to prior knowledge and experiences: (Questions or activities that help

students make links): 2 minutes
- Open the discussion by talking about the students experience at the fire station
i. Can anyone tell me something they learned at the fire station?
1. How the firefighters help their community (fight fires, go to
medical calls, go to car accidents, etc.)
2. What tools they use (e.g. axe, chainsaw, etc.)
ii. So fire fighters help their community, what are some other jobs that help
the community?
- So there are lots of different jobs that make up a community, lets take a look at
some of the tools for other jobs.

Tasks and activities: (What challenging tasks and activities will students engage in as
they construct knowledge, learn new skills or behaviors and develop understandings?)
- Read the book: (10 minutes)
o I will have the students sitting in their squares on the rug.
o I will stop periodically throughout the book to have the students predict
what comes next using the pictures in the book.
- Matching: (10 minutes)
o I will give the students a set of cards that include pairs of pictures that they
have to match.
o I will ask the students to write a sentence about each picture and
encourage them to use the labeled photos of the jobs to help with spelling
if they are unsure of the word.
Closure: (How will you wrap up the lesson and reinforce key ideas? Closure may include
some form of assessment or exit slip) 5 minutes
- At the end of the lesson I will have the students gather on the rug to talk about the
activity.
i. What were a few of the jobs and tool pairs that you found?
1. How does this job help others in the community?
ii. Can everyone be a doctor or a firefighter? Why not?
iii. So every job plays a role in helping the community to run well.