The Continental Congress approved the design for our national flag on this day in 1777, and today is now celebrated as Flag Day.

Resolved, that the Flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.

—Journals of the Continental Congress, June 14, 1777

When the Continental Congress approved the flag’s design on this day in 1777, they started a process that led, through 27 revisions, to the modern U.S. flag. Because neither the arrangement of the stars nor the proportion of the flag was defined in the Continental Congress’ resolution, early flags used many variations of the rectangle and the basic theme of white stars on a blue background. In 1912, President Taft signed a resolution regulating the flag’s proportions and the arrangement of the stars into six horizontal rows of eight each. The arrangement of the stars was changed by President Eisenhower on two separate occasions in 1959. Provisions for including stars for each new state were first made in 1818, and the flag was most recently altered in 1960 when Hawaii entered the Union. The elaborate rules of flag etiquette are governed by the federal Flag Code (public law 94-344). Among the code’s provisions: the flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling, the flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever and the flag should never be used for apparel, bedding or drapery. In honor of our national symbol, Flag Day is celebrated annually on June 14.

EDSITEment
In the unit Stars and Stripes Forever: Flag Facts for Flag Day (K–2), students learn what a symbol is while developing their understanding of how one particular symbol, the American flag, plays an important role in the everyday lives of American citizens.

The unit Oh, Say, Can You See What the Star-Spangled Banner Means? (3–5) is designed to explore the symbolic, historical and literary background of the American flag, beginning with Francis Scott Key’s poetic account of the bombardment of Fort McHenry.

Xpeditions
In Why Do We Have an American Flag? (K–2), students consider how a flag represents a country’s people and resources and why a flag can evoke emotions.

ReadWriteThink
Most students in American classrooms know the words to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. The words are a kind of automatic language, and we may not think in detail about what we are saying. Freedom of Speech and Automatic Language: Examining the Pledge of Allegiance (9–12) asks students to explore this rote learning and their own right to freedom of speech by examining the Pledge of Allegiance from a historical and personal perspective and in relationship to fictional situations in novels they have read.

Illuminations
In the unit Powerful Patterns (Pre-K–2), students explore a variety of patterns in mathematics, physical education, science and social studies, including patterns on historical flags.