Grade 1 Lesson at a Glance: Unit 4, Lesson 1

Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
I Know a Place

Lesson at a Glance
Unit 4, Lesson 1: Our Country, Our World (pp. 116-121)

The Big Idea
Framework Concept: Location Students begin to understand the relationships among state, country, and world.

Help students differentiate the size and relationship of state and country. Use masking tape to make a rough shape of the United States on the floor. Have children form a human outline by standing on the tape. Then ask one child to pretend to be a state (perhaps your own), and to stand inside the United States. Then discuss whether an outline of children representing the world would be bigger or smaller than the outline for the country of the United States. Point to the classroom flag and explain that the flag is a symbol of our country, The United States of America.

Check for Understanding

Have students make up a poem with the words state, country, and world that shows that they understand the relationships among the three geographic units.They can make an audio tape of their poems for presentation.
Photocopy a map of the United States and a map of the world. Have students color the fifty different states on the map of the United States. Have them color the country of the United States on a map of the world. Help them to label state, country, and world on the maps.

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