All About the Pledge of Allegiance

Explicit Instruction/Teacher Modeling

• Explain to your students that the pledge is important and that they are going to look at the words closely to understand what it means.
• Read I Pledge Allegiance by Pat Mora & Libby Martinez to your students.
• Stop at various points of the book to discuss key details.
• At the end of the story, discuss and recount the central message of the story. Potential guiding questions include: What does the Pledge of Allegiance mean to Lobo?
• Display the Pledge of Allegiance script, and have your students recite it with you.
• Raise a discussion on the pledge. A great discussion question is: What words do you see here that you think are important?
• Ask students for input on what they think the words mean.
• Write the definitions in the space between the text. Use the words in a sentence, and provide context to scaffold learning if necessary.

Guided Practice/Interactive Modeling

• Explain to your students that they now have a better understanding of what the Pledge of Allegiance is saying.
• Tell your students that it can represent different things to different people, explaining that the Pledge of Allegiance meant security and safety to Lobo because the United States was a place that made her feel warm, as if she was wrapped in a blanket.
• Have your students think of one or two things that the Pledge of Allegiance means to them and write it on a sticky note.
• Instruct them to put their notes on the board.
• Review the words on the board and pull out common themes to discuss.
• Discuss how important it is to help each other and make promises.

Independent Working Time

• Instruct your students to create their own booklets to help them remember what the Pledge of Allegiance means to them.
• Pass out the Pledge of Allegiance booklets.
• For each underlined word, have your students write a word or sentence and draw a picture that represents what that word means. Instruct your students to draw the picture on the right side of the booklet.

• Enrichment: Put students in groups to discuss their reflections and what they put in the booklet. Direct your students to write at least one sentence that describes the meaning of each underlined word in their booklets.
• Support: Scaffold vocabulary by relating to a personal event for your students. Have your students write synonyms that describe the meaning of each underlined work in their booklets. Use the rubric to evaluate their learning.

• Evaluate the students' completed booklets, making sure that they have written or drawn something that represents the underlined words.

• Check in with individual students to make sure that they are on task and can identify key words in the pledge.
• Share some of the books the students completed, and have the class comment on their ideas and pictures.