Identifying Similarities and Differences

I started a new PBL activity with my 1st and 2nd grade groups yesterday about creating a flag for our school that contained colors and symbols to represent our school. For some background knowledge, we looked at a book about the American flag and discussed the colors and symbols on the flags throughout the years. I used questions from arzano's High Yield Instructional Strategy of Identifying Similarities and Differences to lead the discussion. We used the book Stars and Stripes: Our National Flag by L. Fisher for this discussion. Students at both grades did very well with this activity. They picked out some details from certain flags that I had missed. :) We talked about why there were certain numbers of things and certain colors used. Hopefully this book and discussion provided some background for the brainstorming and flag design that we will begin today.