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Jennifer McGinnis

Take A Closer Look at Your Neighborhood

Grade level: 3

Length:45 minutes for two days

Performance Expectations: The students will be able to compare and contrast their community with another one.

Materials: Paper, colored pencils, crayons, books for students to read about communities

Procedures:

Introduction: Discuss communities and give the students a brief description of communities. Like school, home, the city that they live in, the state that they live in, and other places around the world. Talk with the students about two different communities that they can compare and contrast. Read a book on communities to the class.

Development: Explain to the students that they are going to make a book comparing and contrasting two communities that they have been to or know a lot about. Tell them that the cover must have a title with both places on it, a picture, and their name as the author. Tell them that the left side of each page must correspond to the right side of each page. Let them see an example of a book that you have prepared. Tell the students that they can compare and contrast anything that they want to and give them examples like weather, food, sports, and rules.

Closure: Discuss the comparisons of the communities and ask for volunteers to discuss parts of their books. Have students write at least four complete sentences about these communities in their journals.

Assessment: Read and respond to the students' books on a separate piece of paper.

Look over the students journals to see if the students wrote what was assigned to them.

Adaptations: Students could imagine what it feels like to live in the other community.

Reference: McGinnis, J. (1997)