Thursday 16 May 2013

Building a Community



This past week we created a community on the floor in our class. We brainstormed a list of “must haves” that a community needs. Then I had students write about an important thing in our community and why we needed it.




 Later in the day, I moved all the desks to the side and created a large space in the middle.




I put tape on the floor to represent the streets and the rest was up to the students. 




They each created those important places and items in our community with construction paper. As they each completed their work, they came to the floor and placed their building or object where they thought it belonged. The students then wanted to add extras to the community: grass, parking lots, lego cars, airport, stop lights, bridges, even closed roads due to construction.


Starting to build.

Putting the pieces onto the floor and into the community.
We added North, East, South and West signs in the community to work on direction and location. Students moved through the community in a variety of directions, using appropriate language to how they moved.

The final product.
I also took pictures of specific areas in the community according to what each student was most interested in. The students then used these pictures to write in their student blogs. You can read about their community here on our student blogs.

Throughout the entire process, all of my students were completely engaged. We were able to integrate Social Studies, Language, Math and Art into this project. My students loved it and so did I. This is something I will look into doing again next year.


2 comments:

  1. Jenni, I saw this post mentioned on Doug's blog on Friday night, and at the time, I was trying to finalize plans for a math activity for next week. Your community post helped me see how everything could go together. Now here's the Grade 6 activity we're going to do in conjunction with the Grade 1 classes: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4869502/Creating%20Communities.docx

    I know that my students will be using many materials beyond construction paper, and what they create will be 3-D instead of 2-D, but I'm still going to show them your post to get them thinking. Thanks Jenni!

    Aviva
    www.weinspirefutures.com

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  2. Thanks Aviva! Your project looks great - if you need another Grade 1 class, we'd be happy to help you out and fill out a survey that a group creates.

    Thanks for sharing the post with your 6's as well - hopefully it inspires some great communities and even better Math! :)

    Jenni

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