Lesson Plan Outline

Grade/Class/Subject being taught: 1st Grade ESL- SS

Unit/Theme of Class: Thanksgiving- A Cultural Approach to Thanksgiving

Standards Applied:
1 – H2.0.7: Identify the events or people celebrated during United States national holidays and
why we celebrate them (e.g., Independence Day, Constitution Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day;
Presidents’ Day).
1 – G4.0.1 Use components of culture (e.g., foods, language, religion, traditions) to describe
diversity in family life.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.4.3: Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing,
speaking, reading, or listening.
Content Objective(s):
1. Students will be able to sequence the events that lead up to Thanksgiving and some of the
Traditional that are still implemented in our culture today.
2. Students will also be able to identify what types of food are traditional for an American
Thanksgiving dinner.
Language Objective(s):
1. Students will be able to listen to, read, talk and write about the establishment of Thanksgiving and
the traditions that are still implemented in our culture today.
2. Students will be able to use the first person language structure to say and write about things they
are thankful for.

Key Vocabulary to be Covered Supplementary Materials to be Used

1. Thankful - Thanksgiving Puppets (including a ship,

2. Thanksgiving pilgrims, Indians, and various different types of
3. Pilgrims thanksgiving food)
4. Indians - Materials for the ocean and colonies
5. Sailed - Feathers cut out of construction paper
6. Peace - The Turkey’s body (made by teacher)
- Markers, pencils, scissors and glue
- Adapted text presented on the board

SIOP Features

Preparation Scaffolding Grouping Options

_x_ Adaptation of Content _x_Input is meaningful
_x_ Links to Background and
___ Links to Past Learning comprehensible
_x_ Strategies Incorporated _x_Modeling
_x_Guided practice
_x_Independent practice
_x_ Whole Class
___ Small Groups
___ Partners
_x_ Independent

Integration of Processes Application Assessment

_x_ Reading _x_ Hands-on Activity _x_ Individual

_x_ Writing _x_ Activity is _x_ Group
_x_ Speaking meaningful _x_ Written
_x_ Listening _x_ Activity is linked to _x_ Oral
objectives
_x_ Activity follows
TBLT
standards

Lesson Sequence

Minutes activity should take Activity

Clearly state the lesson objectives so students understand what

content they will be exploring.

Introduce the topic of Thanksgiving. Provide students with

background knowledge, including multiple perspectives, of how
Thanksgiving originated. Link the immigration of the Pilgrims to
how students might have come here for various reasons including
wanting to be able to make their own choices. (Have the students use
the little puppets and demonstrate the arrival and the meeting to
explain the order of events)

The book ends with the celebration of Thanksgiving so transition into

setting back down around the tables and passing around the food
(paper plates with traditional thanksgiving food glued on). Then
address the first Thanksgiving meal and what kind of foods were
there.
 Go into how we still follow this tradition and in the American culture
we also take time before we eat to say what we are thankful for.

Transition into activity: We are going to talk about and write down
some of the things that we are thankful for. (*Hand out a page with
three feathers, which are lined, and have students write “I am
thankful for…._______”)

Once students are done writing and decorating their feathers we will
assemble our big ‘Thanksgiving Turkey”.

After assembling the Turkey we can wrap up the lesson by

discussing some of the things people in our classroom are thankful
for this year as Thanksgiving is approaching.

Rationale:
For this lesson I talked to my ESL mentor teacher that I am paired with through the college of education
this semester. She discussed with me that student often teach about Thanksgiving around this time of the
year because it allows foreign students to become more aware of the first traditional holiday celebrated in
America.
I first decided what I wanted my students to learn from lesson and planned my content and language
objectives. Then I visited the WIDA can-do descriptors to identify what students between level 2 and 3
can be expected to do. I formulated the lesson to meet the WIDA can-do descriptors while also complying
with the SIOP model standards and TBLT standards.
These two models inspired my choice in activities. The first activity is acting out the movement of
pilgrims to their own colony for religious freedom, then building the colony, meeting and Indians and
making a peace treaty and finally Thanksgiving. The second activity is writing 3 sentences about what we
the students are thankful for on construction paper feathers, decorating and assembling them into one big
‘thankful turkey’. Both of these activities require students to listen to the language, make meaning of the
language, apply the language to accomplish a task and provide students with content information they can
apply to their everyday life.
For the implementation of the activities I first address the topic and provide background knowledge and
definitions for key vocabulary terms before introducing the activity because this holiday is specific to the
American culture and foreign students may be very unaware/ unknowledgeable about this topic. If I
introduce the vocab and activity before the reading and providing them with background knowledge
students might not make meaningful connections between their own life and the content I am providing
them with.
It is also important to note that I chose my materials from a variety of cites. I chose information from an
authentic Indian’s perspective on the holiday as well as an authentic view of the holiday from a pilgrim’s
perspective. The similarity between both perspectives was that they were gathering to form some sort of
peace agreement between the two cultures. This similarity is also the reason I chose to keep the activity in
a large group format, to authentic model the historical event. Although the last activity is an individual
activity based solely on the desire to assess the student’s knowledge of reading, writing and thinking in
the target language.
My first thought was to do something fun on in the classroom like what a movie about how Thanksgiving
originated. From class discussion and readings I decided that it would not be beneficial to my students
learning to present them with a video because of many factors including the speed of the language, the
cultural slang that doesn’t always fit with the academic language used in the classroom and because from
past research we know that language is rarely acquired from watching videos. After this course and
gaining new knowledge about how children acquire language I determined it would be better to have my
students actively engage in how the Indians and Pilgrims both met and agreed to be peaceful. This will
allow my students the opportunity to engage in the language, ask questions about the language and build
off the knowledge that other students provide about the content.