Back-to-School
This new one-week unit is designed to help support your teaching in the opening days of a US History course and to develop students' social-emotional skills in order to engage in an open and supportive classroom community. These first class periods are important to establish classroom norms and an inclusive environment where students honor and value differing perspectives, question assumptions, and actively listen to others.
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Essential Question
How can we work together to create an open, supportive, and reflective learning community?
Lesson 1
Students examine the use of names in this start-of-school lesson as they think about the relationship between their individual identities and their communities.
Lesson 2
Students reflect on the social and cultural factors that shape their answers to the question, "Who am I?" as they engage in an identity chart activity.
Lesson 3
Students reflect on the concept of community and then make connections to their own classroom experiences.
Lesson 4
Students brainstorm expectations for how to work together during the school year and develop a contract that establishes a reflective, inclusive environment where all feel known and heard.
Lesson 5
Using a time capsule activity, students analyze primary and secondary sources to construct a historical argument about the story of the United States.
Explore the factors
that influence their identities, including the ways they describe themselves and the categories others use to identify them
Consider what it means
to be an individual, but also a member of a community
Envision how
they and their classmates can form a learning community that values all of its members
Back-to-School
Download a .zip file that includes all lesson plans with their associated handouts, readings, and PowerPoints