Exploring Our Community

  We began our unit by asking the question..."what is a community"? 

 Students brainstormed and using interactive writing we recorded their responses about "what is a community" on a chart. Then students  used their dictionaries to  look up the word community. They worked as a team to figure out how to find the word in the dictionary. One student at each table read the definition to the team. Then they decided how to rephrase it in their own words, as if explaining it to a little brother or sister.

We discussed all definitions and contributions on the chart. Then we talked about the fact that communities can be neighborhoods, churches, schools, classrooms, friends at work. Next we listed similarities between different types of communities to develop a list of community characteristics. For example: people that feel they have something in common, work together, have similar needs, etc.
 

Then we talked  how a classroom can be a community. What might they all have in common?  Each student wrote three things about themselves on sticky notes...number of siblings, favorite game or sport, and age. After this, we grouped the sticky notes by similarity.  This led to discussion about how many things we have in common in our classroom with other people.  Over the next few weeks the students participated in many community building activities each morning during Morning Meeting to build community within our classroom. 

The students also discussed the many differences found within each student in our classroom and how those differences bring uniqueness to our classroom community. 

We broadened our theme of community by discussing the history of our city and our school district.  Then each student chose a person or some aspect of our community to research.  They each presented their research project and product to our class to expand our knowledge of how our community functions and depends on so many different type of people.

	Here is a picture of a student that researched a firefighter.
This student brought in  a guest speaker to help present her project!  Her dad!  They taught us about CPR.

We thoroughly enjoyed  a visit by special guests Dr. & Mrs. Gerald Pinson representing the Gregg County Historical Museum.  They brought artifacts from the museum which showed how our community has changed over the past 100 years. The students viewed pictures of downtown Longview from years ago, an old iron and a curling iron that had to be heated over the cook stove.  We viewed many other interesting objects from the past. 

	Dr. Pinson shared an old gun with the students and showed them how hard it was to load ammunition.
Dr. Pinson shows us how men went to the Barber Shop to get a shave and to catch up on the local news!
	Mrs. Pinson demonstrates washing clothes on a washboard.  Wow am I thankful for washers and dryers!

   We also participated in a collaborative Internet project hosted by Marci McGowan to share our community with others. For this project, A Patchwork of Places and Poetry, each child wrote a poem about the person or aspect of our community they researched.  These poems were written using the format of The Important Book.  Then they created a quilt square to depict the person or aspect of the community they researched and we created a class quilt of our community!

Here is a picture of our class quilt!

Here are some books we read during this unit.

My Grandma Lived In Gooligulch by Graeme Base

Oh The Places You Will Go by Dr. Seuss

The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown

Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran

Eight Hands Round: A Patchwork Alphabet   by Ann Whitford Paul

Luka's Quilt by Georgia Guback (Hawaiian)
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt  by D. Hopkinson (Underground RR)

Tar Beach  by Faith Ringgold (African-American)

The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco (Russian)

The Patchwork Quilt by Valerie Flournoy

The Quiltmaker's Gift by Jeff Brumbeau

Links We Used During This Unit