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.
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