Lizzy Rylance

Honors 387A
Lesson Plan Sample

Lesson Plan 2: Connecting With Your Community

Goals:
● Learn about communities on campus
● Learn how to establish community in a meaningful way
● Building Honors 100 community

Materials:
● Nameplates from last week (hand out as people get settled at start of class)
● Candy / snacks
● Scavenger Hunt Objectives ​Handout​ (one for everyone + extras)
● Printed copy of lesson plan
● Laptop and adaptor

Lesson Plan:
● Briefly go over plan for the day ​(3:30-3:32pm)
● Highs and Lows for the week​ (3:32-3:37pm)
● Ice Breaker ​(3:37-3:50pm)
○ Two truths and a lie, everyone takes a few minutes to think of theirs, then go
around the group and see who can guess correctly
● UW Places and Resources Scavenger Hunt (​3:50-4:30pm​ - 35 min scavenger hunt + 5
minute buffer)
○ Explain rules of scavenger hunt, then split class into teams of 3-4 people each
■ Each group gets a hand-out of clues
■ Have to take a picture of the place that the clue describes to get 5 points,
or write the name of the place for 1 point
■ Plan your route strategically!
○ Have snacks & music going when people come back, winning group gets an
additional prize (something UW related, maybe a UW pin or some other cheap
item from the bookstore)
● Scavenger Hunt Debrief ​(4:30-4:35pm)
○ What was the easiest to find? What was the most challenging? How to find these
resources?
● Brief lecture about community ​(4:35-4:40pm)
○ Talk about the statistics of the importance of community that I learned about in
Honors 397
■ Of the 45% of students who begin college and don’t continue at the
school at which they began (Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, 2006, ed.gov, 2016)
Lizzy Rylance
Honors 387A
Lesson Plan Sample
■ 84% of those who leave during their first year choose to depart for
non-academic and non-financial reasons (Educational Policy Institute,
2013)
● Ask class to briefly discuss (30 sec) what reasons these could be
■ A shared sense of community/belonging is vital to the success of today’s
college student and the #1 predictor of college success, whether
measured by...
● Class enrollment
● Attendance
● Satisfaction
● Participation
● Performance (GPA)
● Overall graduation rates
● Extracurricular engagement
■ Especially evident among: undergraduate students, first generation
students, historically underrepresented populations

○ Ask class to share all the communities they are involved in or know about, inside
and outside of UW
● Class discussion: Priorities ​(4:40-4:48pm)
○ Ask class to split into groups and discuss: What are some conflicting priorities
that may come up throughout college? Is it possible to balance all of these
things? If so, how? (4 minutes)
○ Share out loud (4 minutes)
● Wrap up ​(4:48-4:50pm)
○ Reminders + upcoming assignments
■ Assignment 2 review from last week
○ Exit slip: write down 1 thing you were proud of this week

If extra time:
● add discussion about communities that people want to join but are not a part of yet, have
everyone write down two potential communities and discuss the challenges that come
with seeking/joining a new community

If running out of time:

● Instead of splitting into groups to discuss priorities, work as a big group and have people
call out conflicting priorities while I write on board. This way we can cut the “share out
loud” portion.