Name: Samantha Schwab

Placement Grade: Kindergarten
School: Marcy Open School

Civics/Literacy
Integration Lesson Plan
Introduction

Source (text) Citation:

Meiners, C. J. (2003). ​Share and take turns.​ Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing, Inc.

Summary:

Share and Take Turns​ is a book that teaches children how to share. The words and the illustrations
show explicit examples of what sharing looks like in a classroom, how to do share, and why sharing
is important. The book almost acts like a social story, containing first person sentences like
“Sometimes when I play, I want what other people have, or they want what I have. I know a way we
can get along. We can share.” These declarative “I” statements can help students integrate the
sharing strategies into their own thinking and behavior.

MN Citizenship and Government Standard ​and​ Benchmark:

0.1.1.1.1. Democratic government depends on informed and engaged citizens who exhibit civic skills
and values, practice civil discourse, vote and participate in elections, apply inquiry and analysis
skills, and take action to solve problems and shape public policy.
Benchmark: ​Demonstrate civic skills in a classroom that reflect an understanding of civic values.
For example: Civic skills—listening to others, participating in class discussions, taking turns,
sharing with others, cooperating in class activities, wise or judicious exercise of authority. Civic
values—fairness, individual dignity, self-control, justice, responsibility, courage, honesty, common
good, respect, friendship.

Language Arts Benchmark:

RI.0.2.7.7. With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the
text in which they appear (e.g., what person, place, thing, or idea in the text an illustration
depicts).

Rationale

One civic skill that my students are working on right now is sharing with others. This is an important
social skill in the classroom: students who know how to share can successfully navigate many social
situations in a classroom with many students and finite resources (ie—toys and materials). Recent
longitudinal research has indicated that teaching this and other social skills in the kindergarten
classroom is linked with higher academic achievement, lower substance abuse behaviors, lower

 
 
instances of emotional and behavioral issues, and lower amounts of criminal activity through age 25
(Jones, Greenberg, and Crowly, 2015). It is also very important to begin teaching civic skills and
values even at a young age (Beck, 2018). I chose this book because it contains many explicit
examples that can help students understand how to share, why it is important to share, and how they
could benefit from sharing with others in school. The simple words and the engaging illustrations of
this book will help students learn about this important skill. As a Social Studies teacher, I feel that it
is important to help teach students important social skills needed to live in a world where civilized
discourse and acceptance and respect of others is very much needed. Teaching my students prosocial
skills like sharing will go a long way towards helping them grow and become kind and caring
citizens in a developmentally appropriate way.

Objectives

a) Social Studies (Civics) Objective:

Students will be able to explain why sharing is important, and will identify examples of how they can share
resources and materials at school.

b) Language Arts Objective:

Students will be able to use the illustrations in the book to determine different ways to share.

c) Academic Language Objective:

Students will be able to explain why sharing is important in school and how they can share with others using
sentence stems such as “Sharing is important because….”, “We share in school because….”, or “I can share
by….”. Students will use these language structures when talking with a partner.

Resources

Beck, Brittney. (2018, March 13). Teaching to end tragedy: A call to elementary school teachers.
Teaching Tolerance. ​Retrieved from ​https://www.tolerance.org/print/102520

Jones, D. E., Greenberg, M., & Crowly, M. 2015. Early social-emotional functioning and public health:
The relationship between kindergarten social competence and future wellness. ​American
Journal of Public Health, 105​ (11). 2283-2290.

Previous Learning

During the first six weeks of school, the students have been working to build a positive classroom
community, and learning how to be a kind classroom citizen. The beginning of kindergarten is an important
time for many children to learn and practice social skills with peers, because for some children kindergarten
is their first time interacting with non-family members. Having the opportunity to explicitly learn and
practice important prosocial skills like sharing will help set them up for success for the rest of the school year
and beyond.

 
 
The students have been working on identifying favorite illustrations from books, as well as using those
illustrations to make predictions about what the book will be about. This lesson builds on those skills by
asking them to use illustrations to interpret what the text is saying.

Provisions for Individual Differences

During the read-aloud, I will point out different examples of sharing of various complexities to help
appropriately challenge each child at their social skill level. I will provide sentence stems to help the children
frame their answers to my questions in order to scaffold their thinking. I will also model how to use
illustrations to interpret the text, providing students with an example that they can emulate. Throughout the
text I will define uncommon or challenging words in accessible language.

Promoting a Positive Learning Environment

I will promote a positive learning environment by encouraging each student to participate, even if it is just
with their rooftop partner. This will make clear to each student that their thoughts and ideas are valuable and
welcomed in the classroom. I will also be very intentional about how I talk about sharing, making statements
like “sharing can sometimes be really hard” or “sometimes we need help sharing, and that is ok, that is what
we are in school to learn about.” This can help put students in a growth mindset, and help them not feel
shame if sharing is something that they struggle with. I will frame the discussion that sharing is something
that we are all learning to do, and it can be hard for everyone (even grown-ups), and it is something we will
all work on together.

Body of Lesson

BEFORE Reading narrative description of what you and your students are doing during this
section:
What the Teacher is Doing What the Students are Doing
• The teacher will introduce the lesson by pointing out • The students will be sitting on the rug in their cluster
the cover illustration. spots.
• The teacher will prompt the students to say what they • Students will raise their hands if they can describe what
see on the cover using the literacy text questions below. they see on the cover illustration.
• The teacher will prompt the students to notice that they • Students will talk with their rooftop partners about a
are sharing the swing, modeling looking at the time that they shared in school using the sentence
illustration to deduce this answer. stems.
• The teacher will read the title of the book, pointing out
how it fits with the illustration on the cover. “The
children are sharing and taking turns.”
• The teacher will invite the students to talk to their
rooftop partners about a time they shared with someone
in school, prompting with sentence stems, to access
prior knowledge.

Literacy Text Questions Civics Concept Questions

 
 
Look at the cover of this book. What do you Can you think of a time when you shared in
notice about it? What are the children doing in school? Maybe it was earlier today, maybe it was
this picture? How are they feeling right now? yesterday, maybe it was a while ago. Who did you
Why do you think they are feeling this way? share with, and what did you share? Use the
sentence stems “I shared…with….”

DURING Reading narrative description of what you and your students are doing during this
section:
What the Teacher is Doing What the Students are Doing
• The teacher will read the text to the students • The students will listen to the text
• The teacher will ask students selected questions after • The students will think about and respond to questions
reading the page they correspond with. asked during the reading
• The teacher will ask some questions as share-aloud, • The students will participate in rooftop partners for
some will have students raise their hand with an select questions
answer, and some will incorporate rooftop partners.
• The teacher will provide sentence stems for answers to
help students frame their responses and scaffold their
thinking.

Literacy Text Questions Civics Concept Questions

Page 2: What do you see in this illustration? Page 2: These two children want to play
What is this child doing? What are these children play-dough, but she is already using all of the
doing? What do you think they want? What does play-dough. How can they solve this problem?
she want? How can they share?
Page 6: How are these children sharing at recess? Page 15: Did you know that helping someone is a
How can they share with the boy in the back? kind of sharing? Think of a time you helped
someone in school.
Page 8: This girl is holding a robot. What is she Page 17: Is there anything that we do not share in
doing with the robot? (Handing it to another school? When do we not share?
child). And this girl is holding a book. What is she
doing with the book? (Handing it to the girl with
the robot). Does anyone know what this is called?
(Trading). Let’s see if the word “trading” is in the
text, “trading” starts with “t.”
Page 10: How are these children sharing? Page 19: What if you ask someone to share with
(Taking turns). you, and they say “no”? What would you do?
Page 21: If you do not want to share something,
what can you do? What can you say?

 
 
AFTER Reading narrative description of what you and your students are doing during this
section:
What the Teacher is Doing What the Students are Doing
• The teacher will ask the students questions and provide • The students will discuss their answers with their
sentence stems for answers to help students scaffold rooftop partners, using the sentence stems suggested by
their thinking and frame their answers. the teacher.
• The teacher will monitor discussions and prompt
students as necessary to think more deeply about the
questions.

Literacy Text Questions Civics Concept Questions

Why do you think it is important to share at
school?
What would happen if we did not share at school?
What would school look like if we did not share?
What would your home look like? Our
community?

Assessment

For this lesson, I will use my student responses as my informal assessment. I will be recording this lesson on
my iPad, so I will have an audio record of my students’ responses that I can refer back to.

Reflection

Rough Draft Submission date: Instruction date: Reflection date:

What have you learned about What have you learned about your What did you learn about planning
yourself as a teacher? students as learners? &/or classroom organization?

I have learned that it is difficult for me My students really surprised me in I learned that it is very useful to have
to plan out enough questions so that I regards to how engaged they were many questions—especially those that
felt that the students were really with the discussion about sharing, require higher-order
engaging with the material as deeply and how many connections they thinking—prepared ahead of time.
as I wanted, while also keeping in could make. I had thought that the When conducting the read-aloud, I
mind that they are only 5 years old non-example question in particular found that it was really easy to just
and sitting for a long time on the (“is there anything we do not share read the text through, and I found
carpet and having a lot of discussion in school?”) would be hard for them. myself forgetting which questions I
can be hard for them. I realized that it But a few students quickly thought had planned. Luckily, I had written
is better to plan out a lot of questions of some examples (“We do not share them down on post-it notes and stuck
for discussion and potentially not use food!” “Or our shirts!” “Or our them on the appropriate pages, which
them all than to not have enough Independent Reading Books, we really helped me because I could read
planned. It is ok if we do not get to read those all by ourselves!”), and them along with the text. What also
every question, as long as I do enough the rest of the class caught on very helped me is making a color-coded
that they learn and engage with the quickly. I even discovered some ranking system for my questions,
material. students going around the room where the questions I most wanted to
 
 
during Active Learning identifying ask were one color, and questions I
things they could share and things would like to ask if we had time were
they could not share (one student another color. I made sure to have
was very excited to make the priority questions marked from each
connection that we do not share the standard, so that I could make sure I
bathroom by using it together). I was hitting the most important aspects
learned from this that my students of the lesson even if it had to be
respond really well to questions shorter. This really helped me because
that give them opportunities to while I was reading, I was monitoring
think more deeply about things, and the students’ behaviors to see if they
that they are excited to learn and could be further engaged with a longer
make connections with the world discussion with more questions, or if I
around them. needed to make the lesson briefer with
less questions. I ended up asking most
of the questions I had prepared
because my students were so engaged
with it, but I felt more prepared having
planned for either scenario.
What did you learn about teaching How will you use your assessment How were you able to utilize
concepts, content &/or skills? About from this lesson to inform future feedback you received prior to
different strategies? decisions about student learning? teaching your lesson plan?

I learned that Social Studies content I listened back to the student answers The biggest feedback I utilized was
lends itself really well to being from my recording, and I noticed that thinking about and framing this
integrated with literacy content. the students in my class who have a lesson in terms of my “what kind of
Making the content more harder time sharing were not as active Social Studies teacher I want to be”
interdisciplinary can help the children in the whole group questions, but statement. It can be easy to focus on
make more connections while also became more engaged with thinking just fulfilling the standards, or
hitting the standards. about sharing when we did the Think incorporating what the research
Pair Share with their rooftop partners. says is right when creating lesson
Their partners helped them scaffold plans—and these are both very
things in a different way than I could important things to consider. But I
(one girl said “I can’t remember think it will be helpful for me, too, to
sharing” and her rooftop partner said think about each lesson in terms of
“you share the crayons with me at our how it fits in my personal teaching
table!” to which the girl responded philosophy, and how it is serving my
“oh yeah, I shared the crayons”). I students as people and citizens of
could use this as a way to further the world.
scaffold their development of civic
values: by creating more partner and I also amended the final question I
small group discussions and practice, I had the children discuss with their
can engage these students in this rooftop partners from “what would
practice and help them further develop happen if we did not share at
as citizens. school?” to also include their homes
and their community. This helped
them broaden their perspectives
about why sharing is so important
for them as citizens of the world, not
just students at school. This also

 
 
helped them connect back to the
opening question (“can you think of
a time when you shared?”) drawing
back on their prior knowledge of
what sharing looks like beyond
school. This helped them, I hope, see
sharing as a civic value and not a
singular rule to only follow in the
classroom.