Lesson 2

What’s In Our School’s Community?

Standards:

• NCSS Standard: Individual Development and Identity - assist learners as they work independently and cooperatively within groups and institutions to accomplish goals.
• MMSD Standard (4): Behavioral Science - Demonstrate an ability to interact within a group while performing various group roles including organizing, planning, and goal setting.

Materials: 

• Disposable cameras for each student to take about 10 pictures
• Writing journals
• Community 2 Worksheet
• Writing utensils
• Chart paper and markers

Objectives:

• Students will see various aspects of their community around the school.
• Students will reflect on which areas are used frequently and which places they have not noticed before.
• Students will discuss the relevance of each place to the community.

Lesson Procedures:

• The students will be given the Community 2 Worksheet. Ask the students to get out their Writing Journals because we will tape Community 2 Worksheet in them. Explain we’ll be taking a walk around the school neighborhood today and taking the worksheet and journals with us. Go over the elements on the Community 2 Worksheet for them to know what to be thinking about during the walk.
• Hand out the disposable cameras to the students. They will be in groups or partners with the cameras. Explain that they should be taking about 10 pictures of places that are in the community. About 5 should be places the student knows and is important to them. The remaining 5 should be places the student rarely notices and wants to learn more about. The students will record what they took a picture of so I know what picture belongs to which student when the cameras are developed.
• We will take a walk outside. The walk will include stops to discuss elements of our community. Some discussion questions may include:
  • What do we see?
  • What is a part of our community?
  • Why do we think these things are here?
  • How do they affect us?
  • Who uses these places in the community?
• When we have finished looking throughout our community, we will return to the classroom and share some of the things that were interesting to us. We will make a list of all the places and elements of our community on a large piece of paper to be hung in the classroom. We will discuss the places we didn’t recognize or realize were in our community. We will also discuss the places that are often used.
• The students will be given approximately 10 minutes at the end of the lesson to reflect in their Writing Journals what they discovered today.

Assessment: 

The students’ Writing Journals will be looked at to see what places they have chosen and why with the worksheet. Further, their journal entries will also be looked at to see if they were engaged in the walk around the community.

Next Steps:

Develop the pictures from the cameras for the students.

Format for Community 2 Worksheet:

Take 10 pictures during our walk around the community. Five should be places you recognize/use. Five should be places that are new to you.