Lesson Plan

Emily Roberts, Christine Logan, Sonya Walsh

 

Unit Topic: Geography

Grade: 5th grade

 
Lesson Topic: Capitals of the United States

 
Lesson Objectives: The student will be able to correctly name and locate all the states of the United States and their capitals.

 
Instructional Technique:

 

 

Instructional Materials:

 

 

    Theoretical Perspective: Students should know the states and their capitals because it is important for students to know the general lay out of the United States to help them in further education. Also, it is a Massachusetts state standard that students will be able to (5.3.3) Name and locate states, regions, major cities and capitals, major rivers and mountain ranges in the United States.

 

    Procedure:

        1.       The introductory activity is the States of the Unites States that will be passed out to every student to work on.
        2.       First the students will work individually on labeling what states they already know. Then, the students will work in groups of 2 or 3 and discuss if they can label any more states.
        3.       After students complete the worksheet to the best of their ability, the teacher will have a map of the United States and she call on the students to label the map on the board.
        4.      The teacher will then label the rest of the states and the students will label the rest of the states on their worksheet that they did not know.
        5.       The students will then work on the computer activity, Traveling across America, as they go along they should be viewing all the websites to learn more about each capital.
        6.       The class will come together at the end of the activity and discuss what they learned. Each student should share one interesting fact they found when looking at the websites.
        7.       The teacher will then discuss the rest of the capitals of the United States and the students will label each on their map.
        8.       The teacher will close out the lesson with any questions the students may have.
9.          Adaptation’s-

·         If the student does not know any of the states while working individually have them work with a partner.

·         Provide a list of all the states and the capitals for students who may need them during the introductory activity.

·         Read the questions and answers out loud on the website for students who might have difficulty reading them.

·         Have the student work with a partner if they are struggling with the online activity.

   10.       The teacher will pass out the homework worksheet- The States and Capitals of the United States. The teacher will also pass out the list of all the states and capitals sheet to all students.

 

    Evaluation:

The objectives were met by the class work and the online activity which helped the students by being able to recognize the states and capitals of the United States. At the end of the unit the students will be taking a test on the states and capitals. To help students along in their study process during the unit, we will be giving mini quizzes on the different regions of the United States which includes: Mid-West, Western, Northeast, and Southeast. We will document successful completion of the objectives by grading these tests to see how well the students did.

 

The concerns we have about teaching this lesson is that the online activity does not cover all 50 states and capitals and so students will not be familiar with the other states and capitals not covered in the online activity. Also, learning all the states and capitals at once can be tough for some students who have never learned about the United States and that the lesson might be to face paced. The last concern is that the online activity might become boring for some students and they might get distracted and not visit every website so the teacher will have to keep a close monitor. A question we have is if the students will struggle with this activity?

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