For hundreds of years, groups of people have used flags to express national unity and identity. This lesson capitalizes on that idea by challenging students to design a flag that represents their own story. To conclude, the teacher leads students in identifying shared values by designing a classroom flag.
Flags Create Classroom Communities
Flags have their origins on the battlefields of Eurasia where they were used to lead soldiers during times of war. Out of this experience, humans learned to use symbols to create banners that captured their national identity. Now the whole world embraces the idea that a flag can symbolize the values of a group of people.
For teachers, this idea is particularly useful at the beginning of the school year when the foundations for a classroom community, which will support individual students throughout the year, are being laid. Through the process of creating a classroom flag, students build community by identifying what is important to them and how they often share these values with classmates.
Easy Preparation for Social Studies Lesson
The materials for this project are:
- United States flag (or that of the school's country)
- printouts of the flags of France, Brazil, Egypt, China, and Canada from the CIA World Factbook
- five notecards
- white construction paper for each student
- markers
The teacher needs to make flag flash cards by cutting out the flag printouts and mounting them on notecards. On the reverse, the teacher writes three clues for each country. The first clue should be about the symbolism found on the flag. For help with this, Wikipedia has articles about each country's flag which can be found on the main page with this term: Flag of [Country Name]. The remaining clues can be geographical or cultural.
For example, the Brazil flag card can read:
- Green is a symbol for the abundant forests in this country.
- This country is the largest in South America.
- The Amazon rain forest is located in this country.
Back to School Lesson Teaches Symbols
Since the symbolism of the U.S. flag (or that of the school's country flag) should be familiar to students, it makes a great lesson opener. With the teacher's guidance, students can identify the flag's symbolic elements as a way of refreshing their understanding. When the class is familiar with the idea that colors and shapes can be used as symbols, the teacher can move on to the flag flash cards whose clues help cement this idea.
Then, students take their knowledge and, after reflecting on what is important to them, design their own flag on construction paper. The teacher can provide examples of common symbols like stars and olive branches then circulate to encourage students' creativity. Through this process, children are not only creating artwork, they are identifying their values and what is important to them.
The fruit of this lesson bears out when the teacher gets the class back together and holds a conversation about the values the classroom shares. Through this dialogue the teacher can lead students in representing these shared values as symbols. Then (and the teacher may want to do this later without student help) the teacher can construct a classroom flag which members of the emerging classroom community will be proud to see hanging in their room or hallway.
Flag Lesson Builds Classroom Community
For a long time, people have used flags to represent shared identity. With a few simple materials, educators can capitalize on this idea to help students identify what is important to them and how they often share these values with those around them.
Jason O'Hare - Jason O'Hare is a veteran educator and Suite 101 contributor interested in all aspects of teaching in elementary schools but especially ...
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