Wouldn’t you love to not feel guilty spending time on Valentine’s Day? Here’s an easy way! Add in Social Studies objectives on personal group identities. Help your students recognize, own, and love their group identities! This is a skill kids need as you build the foundation for self-love, and respect for others.
What Are Group Identities?
Many Kindergarten and 1st grade Social Studies curriculums have group identities objectives as a lead-in to learning respect for differences. Primary students do not always know what groups they are a member. Some of this teaching can be tricky. You could begin with asking which group:
- gender
- neighborhood, state, or town residency
- ethnic or culture group
- hobbies (bike rider, skateboarder, sketch artist, chef, etc)
- favorite school subjects
- birthplace
- boy-scout, girl-scout,
Prep Your Students
Take a few minutes to prep your kids before you start. They don’t just go where their friends go. This activity is about realizing your own group identities. It’s about hi-lighting the likenesses and differences. Putting the choices out for the students to sort themselves into gives each one credibility. And they might learn something about another student.
Set Up Group Identities Choice
Next, you need to decide how you want to set up group choice.
- Do you want to play it the “corners” way, where you post the choices on different walls, and the students sort themselves to where they belong?
- Do you want to set up choice stations around the room, and have the pairs move through, recording choice at each?
- Do you want them to share out the answer to a quick question, or do you want them to share out in whole group at the end?
Students Record Group Names
The last thing you need to decide is how your students will record their group identities on their hart. There are a couple of ways:
- For 1st of 2nd grade, choices could be copied onto the heart. You could have them write the word, or make a sentence with I am……..
- For Kindergarten, shorter names could be copied, and longer names could be cut out and glued tot he heart.
Sharing Out Group Identities
It is important to give the students a chance to “share out” to the class. This could mean placing the choice cards around the room, and letting kids move to stations to choose, then copy the group identities names onto the heart.
Last thing you need to decide is how you wish the students to share out their group name choices. This is where the magic happens. They get a chance to be proud, and to see similarities.
Here are a few ways:
- If you send pairs through choice stations, have them discuss how it feels to be part of that group with their partner.
- If you go the “corners” route, have the group members answer a short question, sharing out to that group.
- After completion of the “heart”, have volunteers share out in community circle. Kids in that group could stand up while that student shares 3 choices.
- You may choose to display their group identities hearts on a bulletin board. You may choose to send them home to have the families help fill it in.
If you would like more detailed instructions on how to make your own classroom tree, click here.
If you need February Social Studies resources, click on one of these covers to drop by my store!
