Lesson Plan Template for Elementary Education

Name: Ashley Henderson

Grade: Second
Topic: Math Calendar: dates in the past and future
Essential Questions (What question(s) will students grapple with as they learn through this
lesson?):

How do I figure out a date in the past?

How do I figure out a date in the future?
How many days are in a week?
How many months are in a year?
Does the week restart with a new month or does it continue?
What patterns exist on the calendar?

Primary Content Objectives:

Students will know (facts/information):

There are seven days in a week.

There are twelve months in a year.
The name of each day of the week.
The name of each month.

Students will understand (big ideas):

The calendar is a way to represent units of time (e.g., days, weeks, and months).
How to use a calendar as a way to measure time.
The days of the week continue in the same order even when a new month or year begins.
Patterns are a way to recognize order and to predict what comes next in an arrangement.
That specific vocabulary helps explain and clarify ideas.

Students will be able to do (skills and behaviors):

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Focus
of the
Lesson

Connection
to Other

Units and
Standards

Determine the day of the week and dates before a given day of the week and date.
(Example: What day of the week was it three days ago? What was the date?)
Determine the day of the week and dates after a given day of the week and date. (Example:
What day of the week will it be in three days? What will be the date?)
Determine the day of the week and date that is a specific number of days or weeks in the past
or in the future from a given date, using a calendar. (Example: Monday, September 21, 2015
is 7 days after Monday, September 14, 2015; Friday, September 11, 2015 is three days before
Monday, September 14, 2015).
Identify specific days and dates [Example: What is the date of the third Monday in
September (students are looking at a calendar for September)? What day of the week does
September 14, 2015 fall on (students are looking at a calendar for September)?]
Participate in a range of collaborative discussions building on others ideas and clearly
expressing their own (e.g., one-on-one, small-group, teacher led).
Ask and respond to questions to check for understanding of information presented (e.g., stay
on topic, link remarks to those of others).
Follow rules for discussions and assigned group roles.

Related state or national standards: (Examples include State Standards of Learning, Common
Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards or National Curriculum Standards for
Social Studies)

VA Math SOLs
o 2.13: The student will
a. determine past and future days of the week; and
b. identify specific days and dates on a given calendar.

Assessment (How (and when) will students be assessed? What evidence will you collect to
determine whether students have met the lesson objectives? Will the assessment(s) be a preassessment (diagnostic), formative (ongoing feedback) or summative?)

Pre-assessment: The students are given a math pre-assessment at the beginning of every nine
weeks. The pre-assessment given last week identified ten students as needing additional help
with calendar skills. Seven students were identified as needing additional practice with
ordinal numbers (Note: Four of these students also needed calendar skill support). Five
students were shown to need additional support with recognizing even and odd numbers
(Note: All but one of these students needed calendar support and the other student needed
ordinal number support. One student needed support in all three areas.)
Formative Assessment: During the lesson, I will ask the students the location of various dates
on the calendar. This will serve as a formative assessment to show whether I need to work
with an additional group of students one-on-one or if I should expand upon the lesson and
ask the students to make equations from the movements on the calendar with an advanced
version of the Climb the Calendar game.
Formative Assessment: Working with the small group on the calendar math page serves as an
informal formative assessment that allows me to reword my questions and look more closely

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at how they are receiving their answers to find the reasons they are struggling with the
concepts.
Formative Assessment: Going over the Calendar Math page as a whole class allows me to
reword a question if there were a lot of students that misunderstood or review a concept if it
is clear that a wide majority of the class did not understand.
Summative Assessment: The completed Calendar Math pages serve as a summative
assessment to show me whether the students could work through the questions and correctly
navigate the calendar. The Calendar Math page is directed more at the concept of whether or
not the students can correctly fill in a calendar and find specific days of the week.

Materials and Resources (List here all materials that you will need in order to successfully
teach this lesson. Include technology and website links, texts, graphic organizers, student
handouts, physical manipulatives, etc.):

Class Calendar for September

o Cards for every day of the month with various shapes
Calendar Math: Appendix A
Months of the Year Song: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2013/11/meetingcommon-core-standards-during-calendar-time
Climbing the Calendar Game
o Class Set of Dice
o Class Set of Pieces (Can be cubes)
o 10 Record Sheets

Key Vocabulary and Definitions (I will not be going over these definitions, but these words will
be mentioned repeatedly. The students should already know all of these words from previous
years in school, but if not, I can review them in a small group.):

Calendar: a chart or series of pages showing the days, weeks, and months of a particular year,
or giving particular seasonal information.

Lesson Procedures:
1. Introduction and goal orientation: We have not been doing calendar consistently in class at
this point, but the pre-assessment shows that it is important to review some of these skills
with many students. Additionally, one of the last times we did calendar time the students
struggled with the concept that the months moved consistently from one to the other. (Note:
Mrs. Anderson cut apart a calendar to show how the days fit together. She combined the two
months to show that the 31st of August was the day before the 1st of September.) We will
begin the lesson with a song reviewing the months of the year. The song will be easy for
them, but it will review the concept that the twelve months come one after another and the
end of the year brings the next year with the same months (January comes right after
December).

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2. Connecting to prior knowledge and experiences (Questions or activities that help students
make links): Once we finish the song, the students will sit back on the carpet facing the
calendar. The calendar was last updated on Thursday, September 10, 2015. The question for
the students will be what is todays date? We are trying to teach the students to look to the
front board to find the days date. Hopefully, the students will look to the front board to find
the days date. If not, I am going to direct one of the students to read me the date off the
front board. The next question is where does today go on our calendar? I will call on one
student to answer and then have the other students confirm with a thumbs up, thumbs down,
or thumb to the side if they are not sure. I will call on a person with a thumbs up to tell me
how they are sure of the location of todays date on the calendar (if the initial answer was
correct). If the initial answer was incorrect, I will ask how we can use the date written on the
board to figure out where todays date is located on the calendar. We have been talking about
using resources that we understand to help us figure out different problems that we do not
understand. I will ask the question, What is the day of the week today? Can you all point to
the column on the calendar for Wednesday? Is it this column (Monday) answer together?
How about this one (Friday)? Is it this one in the middle (Wednesday)? Yes! So, we will put
todays date on the calendar in the middle. If today is September 16, 2015, what was
Saturday? What strategy can we use to figure it out? We know that today is the 16th of
September and our calendar shows that last Thursday was September 10th. Could we hold
one of those numbers in our head and count forward? Would it also be possible to count
backward from todays day of the 16th? Lets count forward first and then confirm our
answer by counting backwards. How do we locate certain days on the calendar? If I gave
you the date Tuesday, September 8, 2015, how would you find it on the calendar? Raise your
hands! (Expected answers: Find Tuesday and move down, count from the first to the
eighth). Will you come show me how you do that? What can you do if you do not know
what day of the week the specific date falls on? (Expected answer: count to that date) If you
know what day of the week a specific date falls on, can you figure it out without that part of
the calendar being filled in? (Expected answers: No because you dont know the dates. Yes
because you can count on.) Can we figure out where Monday, September 21, 2015 on the
calendar? What about Monday, September 28, 2015? Is there a pattern? What number is
being added each time?
3. Tasks and activities (What challenging tasks and activities will students engage in as they
construct knowledge, learn new skills or behaviors and develop understandings?): Thank
you for helping me figure out where certain dates fall on the calendar. I need you to help me
figure out a few more days on the calendar for me. We will have two rotations. One group is
going to help me figure out a few more dates with this problem solving sheet. (Note: Except
for the small group working with me on the Calendar Math page, this will be an
independent activity.) The other group is going to start with a new class game. I will be
working with the group of students identified on the pre-assessment as needing additional
help with calendar skills on completing Calendar Math. [Note: We will be focusing on
recognizing patterns with counting on the calendar, such as odd and even numbers or that
there is always seven days between a certain day of the week (e.g. Monday and Monday).
Additionally, some of these students struggle with one-to one correspondence, so we will be
focusing on properly tagging the calendar number boxes when we count the dates.] If we
have time, I will also be playing the game with these students. Before we disburse, I will

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read through Calendar Math and then explain the game to the students by reading through
the directions and modeling the game with a student as my partner. Prior to this lesson, I will
set up the materials for the game, so the students are ready to play. The purpose of this game
is to have the students interacting with the calendar. Eventually, the students will be able to
create/work through subtraction problems as they complete the game, but this is just getting
them focused on how the calendar is combined and how the days of the week continue. The
board shows them that the months are connected.
4. Closure (How will you wrap up the lesson and reinforce key ideas? Closure may include
some form of assessment or exit slip): In the last ten minutes of math time, I will go over the
Calendar math sheet as a class. This will allow me to see who understood the calendar
questions and who needed additional help. I will call on various students to complete the
worksheet as I display it on the Elmo. This will serve as a wrap-up and let me know what
concepts need to be reviewed or re-taught.
Accommodations for individual differences [How will you modify the content (what is
learned), the process (how the content is mastered) or product (how the learning is observed and
evaluated) to support diverse learners? Describe additional supports that can be used for reteaching if needed, and a challenging extension for students for demonstrate mastery quickly or
show evidence of a lot of prior knowledge.]:
For the students identified as Gifted or on the watch list for Gifted, I may have them write
equations associated with their movements on the calendar during Climb the Calendar in their
math journal. These students will also have a calendar record sheet as an option to help them
make the connections between their movements on the calendar and the associated equations.
For example, if the students start on January 5th and roll a two, they would move to January 7th.
That equation would be 5 + 2 = 7, but if they hit a ladder they may move to January 12th, so the
equation would be 5 + 2 + 5 = 12. I would ask them to answer the question of what happens at
the end of the month. How can you break the equation into two parts, so you know what day the
desired date will fall on in the next month?
I will be working with the group of students that need additional help with calendar skills.
I will be reading through the questions with the group because this includes many of our
struggling readers. Additionally, I will be asking probing questions, such as why did you come
up with that answer or how do you know as we work through the paper as a group. We will be
focusing on recognizing patterns with counting on the calendar, such as odd and even numbers or
that there is always seven days between a certain day of the week (e.g. Monday and Monday).
We will be practicing counting on and counting back as a strategy. These strategies and patterns
will help them to decipher the calendar, but they will also help with other skills such as skip
counting. Additionally, some of these students struggle with one-to one correspondence, so we
will be focusing on properly tagging the calendar number boxes when we count the dates.
I will read the worksheet aloud to the whole class, so the struggling readers will have a
better understanding of what they are being asked to do during this independent work time.

Appendix A

Name: ________________________________

Calendar Math

Today is: __________________, _________________________ ________, _________________

Day
Month
Date
Year
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Circle todays date on the calendar.

How many days are in a week? ________________
How many months are in a year? __________________
Fill in the missing dates.
If the first day of September was on a Tuesday. What day of the week was the last day of
August? ___________________________
There are thirty days in September. The 1st day of October will be on what day of the week?
______________________
Look at the calendar for September. How many Mondays are in September? ____________
If today is the twentieth day of school and we started school on a Wednesday and did not
attend school on September 7th, then how many Mondays have we been in school?
Is today the first, second, third, or fourth Wednesday of September? ___________________
September

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

16
20

21

23
30

Thursday

Friday

17

18

Saturday

26

Appendix B

7
Climbing the Calendar

Roll the dice and move your piece the correct number of spaces. If the date you land on has a ladder, then you
move your piece to the top of the ladder. Once you reach the top of the ladder, your turn is finished. If the date
you land on has a curvy arrow, then you must move your piece to the date with the point of the arrow. Once
you reach the point of the arrow, your turn is finished. Continue the game until someone reaches the end of the
second month.

Appendix B

Sunday

Monday

Climbing the Calendar

Tuesday
Wednesday

Thursday

February

January

1
Start!

Friday

Saturday

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28
Finish!

Record Sheet
With each roll of your dice, write down the date you started on the first line, the number you rolled on your
second line and the date you ended on the third line. The first one is completed for you as an example. If you
move up on a ladder or move down an arrow, put that date as your end date.
Start Date

Number Rolled
on Dice

End Date

Appendix B
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

Monday, January 5

9
2

Monday, January 7

Appendix B
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.

10