Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences
Lesson Plan
Name: Josie Thompson & Morgan Diiorio
Grade: 1
Topic/Concept: Rules in a community
Materials/Resources
● “Miss Nelson is Missing” by Harry Allard
● Markers
● Large sheet of paper or poster for displaying class rules
Teaching Behavior Focus
● Prime Students for Engagement: Utilize classroom management that is positive and
appropriate
Learning Objectives (measurable)
● Students will be able to explain why rules are needed and foster a sense of responsibility
and citizenship/community in their own classroom.
● Students will be able to collaborate to make a class set of community guidelines/rules that
they will put into practice at school.
Standards
● 1.C&G.1: Understand the importance of rules.
○ 1.C&G.1.1: Explain why rules are needed in the home, school, and community.
Assessment Plan (How will you know that your students met the objective?):
● Throughout the lesson, we will use informal questioning and observations to assess
students’ developing understanding of our learning goals. We will be able to assess
students’ understandings of why we need rules in different communities based on the
data we collect from questions we ask and observations we make. If we see that students
need more support to meet the objective, we will adapt the lesson to emphasize on
students’ needs.
● We will also assess whether students have met the objective based on whether or not they
follow the rules they construct.
New Vocabulary:
● Community - a group of people living in the same place or having a particular
characteristic in common.
● Rules/Guidelines - set of understood regulations for behavior within a particular
community.
Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences
● Vote/Voting - a process for a group of people to fairly decide things when they do not all
agree.
● Consequences
● Action (as in “taking action”)
● Opinions
● Considering/To be Considerate
● Illegal/legal
Note: A detailed lesson plan is specific enough for another teacher to read and teach
effectively. There should not be any question regarding what to do or how to do it.
Lesson Development (hook/engage/launch, step by step in real time, include questions you will
ask in real time, closure/revisiting learning objectives):
● Students come into class and we tell them there are no rules. (No morning work, no
directions for unpacking, etc.)
● Allow students to experience a class with no rules for 5-10 (With reasonable supervision.
The goal here is to show lack of direction and organization without rules, not a dangerous
free for all.)
● Bring students together to the carpet after time is up. Facilitate a discussion about the
experience with no rules with questions like
○ How did you feel when you saw there were no rules?
○ Were you confused on what to do?
○ How did you see other students' behavior change?
○ What would school look like if we had no rules ever?
● Next, we will read “Miss Nelson is Missing” aloud as a class as a literacy connection and
extension of the previous discussion. This book provides a similar story of a class who is
not following rules and how that affects the classroom environment. The book has a silly
twist to keep students engaged yet still relevant to the main idea of the importance of
rules in a community.
● After reading “Miss Nelson is Missing,” we will have students Think-Pair-Share about
the following guiding question before moving on to creating rules:
○ Why is it important to have rules in a community?
● Transition directly into creating a set of classroom/community rules or guidelines.
○ Put students in small groups of 3-4 to share out any and all ideas about rules for
the classroom.
○ Have groups share out rules that they agreed upon to the whole group. These can
be written down on the board before compiling into a final list.
○ Guide students to think about rules for different areas of the classroom such as
class procedures, materials, directions, attitudes, etc.
Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences
○ Have students choose their favorite rules or ones they find most important that
will be added to the final classroom community guidelines. Make sure students
are working together to compile these, and facilitate appropriate discussion as it
comes up.
○ Create a final copy of the student-picked classroom community guidelines and
rules. Have each student sign the paper and display it in a visible place around the
classroom.
● Assess student understanding by observing how they implement these rules into their
classroom behavior, as well as questioning and observing throughout the lesson.
