Community Helpers
We see, we wonder |
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What is a community?
We started thinking about what is a community and what communities are we part of. We made a mobile showing the many different size communities that we are part of, starting with ourselves and our families, to bigger communities such as District 2.
We started thinking about what is a community and what communities are we part of. We made a mobile showing the many different size communities that we are part of, starting with ourselves and our families, to bigger communities such as District 2.
A community is where people live, work or play together or have the same beliefs.
We then made mobiles showing the different communities we are from. We started with ourselves and then our families. As the circles got bigger, so did our communities. We had our school community, our neighbourhood and our city. We realised that we could add more circles if we wanted to include our country and the whole world!
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Our central idea: There are many people in our community to help in different ways
What are citizens? Citizens are the people in the community.
We started by looking at our immediate community, our family. First we listed all the people who are part of our home community and then described how each of them helps each other. Everyone is an important part of the community because everyone has a part to play. |
What are some systems at home?
We had a look at some systems that might be at home, such as getting your dinner to the table, making your bed or getting ready for school. We looked at the people that are involved in the system and how each of them has a role to play. Then we made flow charts showing the system |
Who is in our school community?
After learning about the important vocabulary and ideas by thinking about our home community, we extended to our school community. To start us thinking about this important community in our lives we made finger puppets of all the citizens who help us. Some of us only had friends and a teacher but some of us remember to include the guards, the cleaners, the principal and the lunch lady. Then we played with our puppets while Ms Morris wrote down how we played.
After learning about the important vocabulary and ideas by thinking about our home community, we extended to our school community. To start us thinking about this important community in our lives we made finger puppets of all the citizens who help us. Some of us only had friends and a teacher but some of us remember to include the guards, the cleaners, the principal and the lunch lady. Then we played with our puppets while Ms Morris wrote down how we played.
Come on teachers, let's go to the staff room. Oh no, all the tea is gone! (Teacher)
You can all play in the tree house (Principal) |
Make sure you turn off all the lights (Guard)
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We had a lot of questions about people in our community. First we practiced asking questions as group to Mr Madine. He came into our classroom and we interviewed him and added some information to our chart. Then we split into groups and interviewed some important citizens in our school community. If you look at the chart above, you can see what we found out.
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After we had learnt about the different people who work in our school community, we had to rank them using a diamond ranking. They looked like this.
With a partner, we had to put the citizens in order from who we thought was the most important to who we thought was the least important in our school community. We had to be good communicators because we had to talk to our partner about where we thought we wanted to place each person. We also had to be open minded because everyone had different ideas about where each role should go, so we had to listen carefully and come to an agreement.
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We then researched some systems in our community and who the people are that are involved in them. In groups we chose a system in our school. First we wrote the steps that we thought were involved. Then we went and asked the people involved to see if we missed anything or were mistaken. We used this knowledge to make a flowchart about our system
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We looked at who we thought was the least important in our community. We reflected on what would happen if we did not have these people in our community and wrote what the community it would be like if they weren't there. We realised that everyone is an important part of the school community, irrespective of the role that they play, because if they were not there, lots of things would not happen.
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Then we thought about how everyone in our community is connected to everyone else. We each took on the role of a person in our community. We then used string to show how a person helps another. We ended up making a large net. This showed how everyone is connected to everyone else. Then when Ms Morris cut some of the strings, we noticed that the whole thing fell apart. For a community to work, everyone has to help everyone else.
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We took on the role of the cleaner in our school community. After recess we were responsible for cleaning the entire lunch room. That involved putting away the food, sweeping the floor, wiping down the tables and the chairs. Some of us liked doing this job while some of us did not. However we all learnt that cleaning is a harder job than we thought and we should appreciate what the cleaners do for us.
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After learning about our school community, we started to look at community helpers in the wider community. We each picked a job to research. We chose pilots, flight attendants, chef, firefighter and nurse. We then wrote a report using the information that we gathered from information books.
You can read our reports on our individual pages. |