Field Placement Assignment

Teacher Candidates:

Stephanie Evans

Date:

October 2014
PLAN

1. Activity Title & Source, &

description of activity:

Building a City
Students will learn about the essentials for a city and then make their
own city in groups.

2. Class description &

Differentiation: Describe
the important characteristics
of the students that need to
be considered in planning &
teaching to facilitate
learning for all students.

Students prior content

knowledge, language
development, social &
emotional developments,
special needs
Include how you
differentiate your
instruction based on this
information

3. Common Core ELA

Standards: Identify strand,
grade, number (e.g. RL4.3)
& include entire standard.

There are 24 total students, 12 girls and 12 boys

There is one student on an IEP and no ELLs.
It is a third grade classroom, and they all live in or around Eaton,
Ohio.
They have been studying geography and understanding where they
are located in relation to the world as in they live in the earth, in
North America, in the United States, in Ohio, in Eaton. This lesson
will focus on Eaton as well as cities in general.
This information is relatively new to them, although I am sure that
they are familiar with the ideas associated with their city and others.
Since it is new they are all on a level area of instruction and
differentiation will be made for students who seem to not understand
within the lesson.

History Strand
Heritage
3. Local communities change overtime.
Geography Strand
Human Systems

6. Evidence of human modification of the environment

can be observed in the local community.
7. Systems of transportation and communication move
people, products and ideas from place to place.

4. Student Learning
Objective (central focus):
ABCD

Students will learn the main components of a city, why those

components are needed and how it changes overtime through a
discussion and then physically create and present their own cities in
groups.

Audience: Who (the student)

Behavior: What (standard)
Condition: How (strategy/text)
Degree: Measureable outcome
5. Instructional Materials,
Equipment & Technology:
List all of the texts,
materials & technology the
teacher & students will use
during the lesson, including
titles & sources (Cite
creator of materials. Where
appropriate, use Lesson
plan or activity adapted
from _____)

Laminated map of Eaton

6. Academic Language:
What literacy terms will
you use to help the students
understand the reading
strategy? Use terms from
the strategy & the standard
(e.g., predicting,
connections, decoding, etc.)

community-

7. Key Vocabulary: List the

rural-

7 Large sheets of paper

Markers/ crayons

locationcomponentspopulation

vocabulary from the

text/strategy that is at the
students instructional &
frustration level.

urbansuburbancommunitycitymapENGAGE & INSTRUCT

Learning Activities: Give detailed, step-by-step instructions on how you will implement the
instructional plan in the procedures below. Describe exactly what you & the students will do during the
lesson & how you will scaffold their learning. Please use a numbered or bulleted list.
In planning your lesson, think about:

The complete step-by-step directions & scaffolding you will provide

What kinds of questions you plan to ask

8. Opening: Elicit students

prior knowledge about
concept & strategy in
multiple ways (not just
questions).

So you have been learning about geography and knowing where you
are located in the world, remember when Mrs. Martin had you draw
an outline of Eaton? What is Eaton? Is it a country? (its a city)
Using a large piece of paper or drawing a boundary of a city/
community on the board:

If I gave you all a piece of land with nothing on it other than a

couple trees like this outline of one and told you to make your
own city, what would you put in it? What buildings would you
build and why? (students answer with what they already
know, with answers like a house for people to live in, a
hospital, police station, court house etc. and teacher writes
their responses down on the paper or board)

If students need more help: Teacher can ask them questions

to get them thinking about what might be important,
prompting correct answers like where would children learn,
what happens if someone steals something, where do you get

something to eat?

Ideas: hospital, school, police station, fire station, houses,

courthouse, shopping mall, entertainment [movies, etc.],
restaurants, gas stations, farms etc.

Teacher puts up the map of Eaton on the board and shows the city
from an aerial perspective.

What do you notice about this map, what else is an important

part of a city? (roads)

Why do we need roads? (to transport people and goods)

Why do we need some of the things on that list? Do we need

everything on the list?

Teacher Modeling: This

should describe how you
alone will demonstrate the
entire strategy to the
students (no participation
from students)

There are many different components of a city or community.

(teacher hands out the handout)

First lets talk about the types of cities that exist. First there
are urban cities. Have any of you been to Cincinnati?
Cincinnati is an example of an urban city. Urban cities have a
very large population, or number of people and they are
places with many, many buildings, like skyscrapers.

Another type of city or community is suburban. Suburban

cities have a lot of houses where people live and they are
usually attached to another type of city.

The last type of city is rural. A rural community is one that

describes a place with a lot of countryside but also has a
town-like area.

Which type of city do you think Eaton is? (rural)

Why is it rural? (because there are lots of farms but there is

also a definite area of town)

Lets go back to your ideas for what went into a city and think
about Eaton. Do you think that Eaton was always like it is
today? (no) What do you think has changed? (the buildings,

tearing down trees, etc.)

Guided Practice: During

this part of the lesson, the
teacher and the students
practice together. You will
assist the students, takes
turns & participate along
with the class.

Independent Practice:
Release the students to
demonstrate their ability to

Mrs. Martin has some pictures of what some of the buildings

in Eaton used to look like. (Mrs. Martin shares the pictures on
the projector)

Overtime cities grow in the number of people that live there,

which means there needs to be more houses, more businesses
and more everything.

As time passes the buildings get older and need to be redone

that is why some of the buildings change or move locations.

Now we are going to get into groups of four and create our
own cities. (Students are grouped by their tables, and the extra
table with three students will be divided into other groups.
(They find a spot around the room where their paper and
group fit)

We are going to create our own our cities. We want our paper
to look sort of like this big map of Eaton. You will want to
draw it like you are looking down onto the city from an
airplane above. (As the teacher lists the requirements on the
board)

You need to have five of the components of a city that we

talked about at the beginning. Make sure you include roads.
Be creative and add whatever you want in your city, make it
colorful, name the buildings, etc.

Everyone look up here at my paper and draw an outline to

make boundary lines for your city.

Next come up with a name for your city and draw it at the top
(Teacher writes Cityopolis on the top of the model paper)

Now look up here to see how I want you to draw a building.

Someone pick something from the list (school) So here is a
school and here are some trees with a road going by it.

Now its your turn, create more buildings and components of

your city on your paper with your group. You have 20

complete the activity alone.

Include complete directions
that explain what students
must do to complete the
activity.

minutes. Everyone will share one component and why they

put it in their city after everyone is finished.
Students create their cities and teacher and helpers walk around
helping where needed.

9. Closure: How will the

Students will each share one thing that they put in their city and why
students demonstrate their
with the class.
ability to meet the objective,
including how you will
measure & document this
ability?
ASSESS
10. Assessment Strategies
How you will document the
students ability to meet the
objective. (Degree) List
quizzes, rubrics, handouts,
or any additional

documentation related to
your assessment.
Formative: Measures
process/progress toward
mastery of target(s)
Summative: Measures
outcomes/achievement of
target(s)

Reflection:

Target-Assessment Alignment Table

Objective

What must the

student know &
be able to
demonstrate?
Students will
learn the main
components of a
city, why those
components are
needed and how
it changes
overtime through
a discussion and
then physically
create and
present their own
cities in groups.

Degree
In this space, describe how you will assess
(F&S) whether students have met this
objective.

Formative: OR

Summative:

Formative: Students will be active in the

discussion about the components of a city
and they will all take part in making their
cities with their group and presenting one
thing in their city to the class.

Overall this lesson went very well! I think that the students were very surprised with it because
they were not used to getting social studies instruction. I was in a third grade classroom that focused
mainly on math and reading since those are the subjects that the students are tested on. The little bit of
social studies that they did do in the classroom while we were in field was to copy definitions of
landforms to make a geography lap-book. There wasnt any instruction given on these landforms that we
saw, though. I was a little nervous of how they would react in discussion for my lesson, but it turned out
better than I expected. The objectives of my lesson were that students will learn the main components of
a city, why those components are needed and how it changes overtime through a discussion and then
physically create and present their own cities in groups. These objectives were accomplished in my
lesson. Students were active in the discussions we had at the beginning about what they thought should
go in a city and then they were very receptive to the old pictures of Eaton (the city where my field
placement was located). They knew where the old pictures were at in town now and understood that the
city has changed. They demonstrated their understanding of at least five important components of a city
in their groups by making their own cities, as you can see above, that included five of the components
we discussed.
The most effective part of my lesson was the part where the students could feely make their
cities. I felt that our discussion beforehand and the ideas we wrote on the board were very helpful in the
students creating a successful city. I gave them distinct directions and qualities that they must have for
their cities, including five of the components we circled on the board from our list, roads, and city name,
and everyone in the group had to draw and present on something. This made sure that students werent
just following what their group did and had to do some thinking of their own to contribute to their city. I
really liked the avenue that was given to them for creativity in this lesson. They had a lot of freedom in
making their city and they loved presenting their cities to the rest of the class. If I had to try something

else I would try is to give them a little bit more background of how I wanted them to make an outline of
a city. I would explain better that their boundary of the city wasnt an island, it was just highlighting
their city. An unexpected outcome was that some of the students drew oceans around their city, because I
didnt clarify how the boundaries of cities that are laid out next to each other would look like. The least
effective part of the lesson was the part of the discussion that was about the different types of cities:
urban, suburban and rural. I didnt elaborate very much on this part of my lesson except to make sure
that they understood that Eaton was rural. I tried to add it to the instructions for the city that they should
choose a type of city and make their cities different depending on the features of urban or rural. This
didnt happen because most of the students just made a city like Eaton and the learning didnt go further
than me writing the types on the board. If I could have done something else, I would try incorporating
the idea that different types of cities have different components. I would have extended the list of city
necessities and discussed what components were specific to rural, suburban and urban communities.
I learned a lot about how to lead a discussion when introducing a new topic to students. Teachers
need to keep the students engaged and interested in the topic. Relating this topic to the students lives
and the cities surrounding them helped a lot and made me see the importance of real-life connections.
This is a need especially with social studies, because it will probably be the most relevant lessons in all
of the students lives after they are finished with school.