Community

Community is a topic that our school and grade level focuses on - it is part of our social studies curriculum - so I was excited to revisit this topic in November and December.  My students had learned that a community is a place where people live, work, and play, and we had briefly talked about ways to improve our community.  To introduce this topic as part of Classroom Champions, we started by reviewing the idea of community with a Frayer model.  Together, we discussed the definition, characteristics, examples, and nonexamples of a community.  The chart that we made is shown below.

'

Next, we watched Alex Rigsby's video.  She challenged us to write down one way we made our community better.  We talked about how our school and our classroom within the school were two communities we were part of, and we brainstormed ways we could make those communities better.  The students' ideas are shown above.  Over the next few weeks, we periodically revisited this list to add ideas to it.  

The next week, I told the students that we would be doing a community service project together as a class.  Mrs. Couch's class and my class worked together, and we thought of Operation Gratitude and Ronald McDonald House as two charities that our classes could organize community service projects for.  We presented both options to our classes, but they were torn and wanted to donate to both organizations.  We decided that we would do Pennies for Patriots to donate to Operation Gratitude first, and then collect tabs from cans for Ronald McDonald House in the spring.  The kids and we were excited to be able to do both!

In the meantime, we got down to work to get ready for Pennies for Patriots.  I showed the kids a video that explained Operation Gratitude.  It is a great organization that sends care packages to soldiers.  They run a program called Pennies for Patriots through which the kids collect coins; for every $15 they collect, Operation Gratitude is able to send one package.  We set a goal of collecting $500.

To prepare for the project, the kids labeled jars that would go in each classroom.  That way, each classroom had a place to collect their coins.  The kids brought the jars around to the right classrooms.

Next, they made posters that explained the project.  We put them up all around the school to advertise.

 The most exciting part of the project was that many of the students were able to go on the morning news to explain it.  I integrated the project into writing by having the students write an informational paragraph about Pennies for Patriots and Operation Gratitude.  Their paragraphs were impressive - their passion and excitement for the project really came out.  I chose six students to read their paragraphs on the morning news.  This was a really big deal for them and they loved pretending to be news anchors like the fifth graders.  In the end, we collected coins for two weeks and raised close to $500!

To finish up the topic, we reflected back on Alex Rigsby's challenge.  Each student wrote down one way they improved their community in the past few weeks, and drew a picture to go with it.  We shared our pictures with each other.  Here are some of their responses.

I think that my students learned a lot these past two months.  They were more conscious of how small actions like cleaning the lunch table or helping a friend could improve their community, which led to them doing those actions more often.  They also got excited about helping other people through our community service project.

K/1/2 Kindness Quilt

We watched the video of the story "The Kindness Quilt".  Then the kids spent a couple of weeks focusing on being kind to everyone they meet.  They kept track of their kindness tasks and then illustrated some on a quilt square.  Here's pictures of some of the kids working as well as the final project completed. +Michelle Salt

Consul School Community Service

We had our cookie sale on December 8 and raised over $180 to cover the cost of a microphone and stand for our community hall.  We delivered the money to the president of the hall board today - she also works at the bank and was able to take our deposit.  Here's the whole crew.  They were very proud of what they accomplished! This includes my class as well as Tami Reynolds and Jodi Geiger.

Community Review

Hello,

For the month of November and December we talked about how to be positive member within our community.  I did this lesson from grade 1-8 and having the grade 7/8’s demonstrating leadership with volunteering their time with different activities within and out of the school.  We started the lesson with creating mini houses with having four to five points stating how they can be a positive member within their community.  Some of these points included from grad 1-8

-        No littering

-        Being respectful to others.

-        Standing by someone who is being bullied.

-        Opening the door for someone.

-        Playing with friends.

-        Helping friends and family.

During the month of November, the students ran a volleyball tournament with myself.  They ended up score keeping, running the canteen and setting up the gymnasium.  This was a huge success in our school seeing this was this was the first time since I’ve been at the school that we have tried to run and organize something like this.  The students did an amazing job on giving up 6-8 hours of their own time.

During the month of December, the students ran in-motion with minute to win it.  Each grade would come during in motion time and they would get 1 minute to stack as many pencils as they can.  We had a group of grade 7/8’s designated to each day of the week to help get this organized. This will continue over the month of January and February.

 The students also organized Christmas hampers that the school gives out to families in our community that is need.  They had to put food and presents into gift bags.  They also went to Dove House and helped out with the elderly.  They played games and did Christmas art activities

Community

Community!

This is a topic that is a big part of our Social Studies curriculum.  My students had already learned that as a good citizen that they should know ways that they could help their community. After reviewing our previously learned content,

I wanted to broaden the students’ definition of community by extending it beyond our school walls and local community. I read the book Malala Yousafzai out loud to my students. Several of my students are originally from the Middle East and they were familiar with this incredible young lady. We discussed the impact she made on the world at a young age. We discussed that as part of this topic that our class would come up with a community service project in which everyone could participate.

Next, we watched our monthly video from our athlete mentor, Alex Rigsby. She challenged the students to come up with a positive way they impact their community and decide as a class one way we could help our school. We put our head together and brainstormed ideas for helping our school community. The students voted and decided to take the first few minutes of recess to help clear their playground of trash. The students began drawing and writing about the first part of the challenge. We took pictures to share with Alex.

For our community service project, we decided to team up with Ms. Kurtz’s class. The students had to decide between Pennies for Patriots which my class last year started or collecting soda can tabs for the Ronald McDonald House. After much discussion and voting, the students were pretty much evenly split. They asked if we could do both projects and that what’s we decided to do. We agreed to do Pennies for Patriots first, and then begin the second project after the first of the year.

Pennies for Patriots support Operation Gratitude. Here is a little background information about the organization.

Operation Gratitude annually sends more than 150,000 care packages filled with snacks, entertainment, hygiene, and hand-made items, plus personal letters of appreciation, to New Recruits, Veterans, First Responders, Wounded Warriors, Care Givers, and to individually named U.S. Service Members deployed overseas.  Their mission is to lift the spirits and meet the evolving needs of our Active Duty and Veteran communities, and provide volunteer opportunities for all Americans to express their appreciation to members of our Military.  Each package contains donated products valued at $75-100 and costs the organization $15 to assemble and ship.  Since its inception in 2003, Operation Gratitude volunteers have shipped more than One Million Care Packages.

In addition to collecting coins, students were encouraged to write letters and draw pictures for the soldiers. Students began immediately working on the project. In writing, they wrote informational paragraphs about the project. Selected students read their paragraphs on our morning news show to spread the word. Flyers needed to be created to hang up around school and the students were on it. They assembled collection kits for each classroom. I was thrilled when the students wanted to set a goal for their project. We had to negotiate the amount and finally decided on a goal of $500.00.  That’s a lot of pennies!

As of today, we have collected close to $500. We also have quite the stack of cards and pictures to mail to our soldiers.

This has been a great experience for my students and me! We’ve come up with a plan, set a goal, and seen it through! The students get so excited every time a stack of card or cans of pennies arrive. Thanks Classroom Champions for the experience. We are looking forward to continuing our support of our community by beginning the tab drive for the Ronald McDonald House at the beginning of the year.

Eastend 2/3 Community

The students at Eastend School have had a long two months of our community unit. I decided to structure the community unit as "student led" as possible. Wherever the students wanted to go with the unit, we went there!
We started by going over our community of Eastend. We talked about what makes our community unique and the special people that live here. We talked about the important people that work here that our town relies on, and the importance of volunteers in a small community. From there, we started talking about what an "ideal" town might look like. Sometimes, grade 2/3s have funny ideas about what is most important - how could we live without a pizzeria?!!
I divided the students in to three groups and had them brainstorm a list of the buildings and amenities they thought we needed to include in a community. We then came together as a group and created a master list, eliminating certain buildings using a majority rule system. Once the  master list was complete the students set to work designing each building to their own specifications. This took a LOT of time - if I revisit this unit in the future, I will limit the number of buildings!!
As of today, the students have started piecing their town together. They decide where each building should go in the town, and work together to make sure everything fits and makes sense. Once all the buildings are glued down, the students will add roads, sidewalks, parks, parking lots and anything else they come up with!
The creativity that has been displayed is amazing. The students are so engaged and invested in the success of "Western Town". The students are building team work skills and learning what "fairness" is all about. They are democratic in each decision and no one is allowed to be the "boss". I have tried to stay out of the decision making process as much as possible and it has forced the students to take ownership of the project.

Beginning stages

Arranging the buildings along "main street"

Gluing the buildings on!

So many discussions about urban planning!

Merry Christmas everyone!
Mrs. Wasko

Consul K/1/2 Community

We decided to have a cookie sale to raise money for a new microphone and stand for our Community Hall.  We wanted to raise at least $160 and were able to surpass that goal.  All of our cookies sold and some community members made extra donations.  Here's a picture of our cookie display, ready to sell!

We'll be finishing our kindness quilt this week.  I'll post pictures when we're done! 

Thank you!

+Anjoli Santiago +Nate Hinze 

Our T-shirts and swag arrived after Thanksgiving break!  The office sent the box down after my students had left for the day so I was able to lay everything out on their desks to surprise them.  The children were stunned by the shirts, folders, bracelets, pencils, and stickers!  The folder immediately became their new homework folders and the pencils had to be sharpened because they just had to try them out.  And of course, they had to change into their new shirts!  

Thank you so much for the shirts, swag, the tablet, and especially for the opportunity to be part of this program!  My students and I are learning so much!  This is a wonderful experience!

Community

+Anjoli Santiago   +Nate Hinze


After watching Nate Hinze's Community video, we began our work by brainstorming the different types of communities around us.  We were surprised to find several they hadn't thought were communities and some there was a question about.  So we brought up a children's dictionary on the computer and looked up the definition of the word community.  We discussed the definition and what it meant and then we looked back over our list of possibilities.  The students ended up with a big list of various sizes.  A final list was our county, city, neighborhood, family, school, classroom, and even the table teams.

With our list made, the students started brainstorming ways we could help our community.  The smaller communities were easy.  The students swiftly came up with ideas such as picking up trash, cleaning the rooms, not making a mess in the lunchroom (that was a big one), helping each other, reading to little brothers and sisters as well as kindergarteners, and following classroom rules.  When we got to the bigger communities, like our city and county, they were a little overwhelmed.  With some prompting though they were able to see that even though their were little, they could still help those communities.  Some of the ideas they came up with for those were raising money for the animal shelter, donating food and other items, going to the nursing homes to sing and read to the elderly, and not throwing trash out on the roads.

My students have learned a lot about the different communities and how they can help each one.  And they have put that knowledge to work.  They have bought ornaments to raise money for Relay for Life and are part of our school's yearly blanket donations for the elderly.  They are wanting to help the animal shelter, too.  Hopefully, we can work something out with that.