Field Trip Lesson

What Is Veterans Day?

Grade Levels: 3 - 6

Objectives
Students will learn why Americans celebrate the Veterans Day holiday.
Students will practice reading comprehension skills.

Materials
Copies of The Story of Veterans Day
Copies of Veterans Day Reading Comprehension Questions
Several dictionaries
Copy of The Wall by Eve Bunting

Procedures
1. Distribute the Veterans Day Reading Comprehension Questions.
2. Instruct the students to look the words up in the dictionary and write the definitions on a separate piece of paper.
3. Distribute The Story of Veterans Day and ask the students to read it.
4. Ask students to underline the vocabulary words and then answer the Veterans Day Reading Comprehension Questions.
5. As a culminating activity, have a class discussion about the way different countries remember and honor their war veterans.

Extensions
Read aloud the book entitled, The Wall by Eve Bunting as the students are seated in the Tallapoosa Veteran’s Memorial Park. Discuss soldiers and veterans in their families. Students then return to class and write letters to veterans that can be delivered to local area Veteran’s Hospitals/Clinics.
As an extra project, the students are given several days, including the weekend, to visit the local site of our Veteran’s Memorial and trace (do a rubbing) the names of someone who was possibly in their family of someone whom they had heard of. These are then shared in class, along with pictures and stories about the veterans in their family.