I Pledge Allegiance...But What Does That Mean? Let's Write a Class Pledge

Can you believe it is already July!  I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July holiday!
In these troubled times we really need to stop and celebrate what makes this country great.
I saw this short video and it really spoke to me, maybe it will to you as well.

Celebrating Independence Day gave me the inspiration I need to finish up a file I had started on 

The Pledge of Allegiance. 

We stand up as a class and my kids put their little hands on their hearts to recite these important words each and every day.  Yet I know most of my third graders really don't understand the what it's all about.  It becomes a pretty meaningless ritual.  

Last September I decided to add the Pledge of Allegiance to our poetry journals.  First we dissected each line and discussed what words like "allegiance", "republic", "nation", "liberty", "justice" all really meant. I created pocket chart cards that we added to our vocabulary chart. We practiced chunking those big long words into syllable parts and then worked on reading and pronouncing them fluently.  

Our word work outs really helped us with decoding these super long words. 

Kids LOVE word work outs.  It gives them an opportunity to get up out of their seats. And boy, don't we all need that. But most of all,  it gives them practice breaking multisyllabic words

You can read more about word work outs in this  blog post:

Word Work Outs

Head here to grab it from my store: 

Word Work Outs

Next, students created meaningful illustrations and practiced matching them.  

We all know how important that visual representation is!

They used them to play memory match games with a partner. 

We created this super easy foldable Pledge booklet with the text so they could read and reread it. 

I added the clipart to the other side so when they open it up, they have a picture of the flag. 

This summer, I added more to the file.  

Now I have a sheet of the Pledge divided into lines. 

Students can cut them apart, mix and fix it back together. 

Great for rereading practice and fluency work!

Here is their page inside their poetry journals.
These independent activities were perfect for my students to work on as I completed some beginning of the year assessments.

This year, I will take it a step further and use the Pledge of Allegiance as my springboard and mentor text for our own classroom pledge writing.
We will start with kids brainstorming words that describe traits of strong classroom citizens.



They can decorate their "Pledge Hand" and we can add it to the classroom pledge that we will write together.


These materials are now available in my TPT store.
You can head here to take a look:



Pledge of Allegiance Materials