What is Fair?  Rights and Justice for a Kindergarten Classroom

Lesson 3: Fairness in Your Life

Teacher: Jackie Beck

Subject Area: Social Studies, Literacy

Grade Level: Kindergarten

Time Needed: 30-40 minutes

Topic: Examine Fairness in Your Life; Writing Workshop

 

MMSD Standards

-Writing Standard: Grade K Students Will: Plan and write texts to entertain, inform, explain and persuade

-Social Studies: Behavioral Science Standard 5: Assess self and others’ behavior in a variety of groups and situations

 

NCSS Standards

-People, Places, and Environment

-Power, Authority, and Governance

 

School of Ed Standards

-Standard 4: Demonstrates pedagogical knowledge in specific domains

-Standard 12: Accommodates for all students

 

Objectives

-SWBAT think of and write about an unfair situation they have experienced

-SWBAT justify why a situation is unfair during a one-on-one conference


Materials

-Student writing journals (paper with lines for writing on bottom half and a box for a picture on top half)

-Pencils

-Crayons

-Assessment checklist (see Assessment section)

 

Lesson Context

            This is the third lesson on a unit about fairness.  In previous lessons, students have grappled with the definition of the word fair and have applied this definition to an imaginary situation.  This lesson will take place during students’ writing workshop time.

 

Lesson Opening

            Remind the students that yesterday they were given pretend injuries and were asked to decide whether a band-aid was a fair solution for everyone.  Tell them that today they are going to be writing stories in their journal about a time in their life when they experienced something that was not fair.

 

Procedure

            Be sure to give the students lots of possible ideas for their story.  Something could have happened to them at school that they did not think was fair; this could have been in your class, in the cafeteria, or on the playground.  Something could have happened at home -- maybe they think that a sibling was treated differently than them so they do not think their parents were being fair.  After giving the prompt, let the students start writing! 

            While students are writing their stories individually, pull one student at a time to have a writing conference with you at the rainbow table.  For some students this conference may happen during the planning stage before they write, while they are writing, or after they have written parts of their stories.  During this conference make sure to tell each student what your expectation of them is – they may be just one or two sentences for some students, it might be asking them to think about proper punctuation/capitalization, or it might be to work on using adjectives in their story. 

 

Closure

            When the writers workshop time is over, tell the students that we are going to be using these stories in a couple of days for another activity.  Remind them that if they have not finished writing or illustrating their story they can work on it during free choice time or the rest period after lunch.

 

Special Considerations

            If a student is struggling a lot to come up with a personal story about an unfair situation they have been in (and after conferencing and brain storming with you) allow them to create a factitious, but believable, situation.

 

Assessment
Please see attached file (below)


lesson_3_assessment.doc
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