Community

Third & Fourth Grades


Third Grade
"A neighborhood with public things."
"A group of people who live together in peace."
"A community is a school or a bank or a motell. It can also be a bran or a grocery stor."
Activities might include going into more detail on how to build a community. You can move into the components of what it takes to run a city such as Portland. Topics would include:
  • Transportation
  • Water plant
  • Rules and laws of a city
  • Public buildings and facilities
  • State parks
  • Recycling

Fourth Grade
This is the year the state of Oregon is studied in-depth in many Oregon schools. It is also a year that you can focus on ways people can work together to improve their community and identify people who have improved the lives of others in communities. Students can focus on activitists and can also look for people they know and see who are making a difference. This might be a family member, a teacher, or a neighbor. It might even be a peer or themselves. What do these people who make a difference do, how are they making a difference, what are the qualities of people who make a difference, and do we, as students and teachers, have some of these same qualities?

The list of activists is lengthy, but here are a few to get you started:

  • Helen Keller
  • Rosa Parks
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Tish Hinojosa
  • Pablo Neruda
  • Nazim Hikmet
  • Cesar Chavez
  • Rachel Carson
  • Vilma Martinez
  • Jane Goodall
  • Benito Juarez
  • Rafael Alberti
  • Frederico Garcia Lorca
  • Gabriela Mistral
Divide the class into small groups and give a map to each student. Have the groups survey the area around the school and find community resources and services. Divide the list among the groups equally and then on the back of the map students write down items for which they want to look. When they find an item on the list, they record the name and the location of the item on the map. Have the students come together as a whole and discuss what they found. Sample questions might be:
  • What community services and resources did you find?
  • What seemed to be missing?
  • Does the community have a problem because things are missing?
  • Would you have found them if you had surveyed a large area?
  • Were there enough resources and services?
  • Does your survey represent what you would find in other communities? For example, your home?
  • What did you learn from your survey and did anything surprise you?
  • What would you like to see changed in the community and how would that change come about?
Have students interview residents that have lived in the community for more than 25 years and ask them to describe how the community has changed. Students may interview someone personal from their own lives, such as a grandparent. Or you may bring in guests that the students can interview. You could also bring in past alumni from the gradeschool who can talk about how the school has changed over the years.
Ideas inspired from Project Learning Tree: Environmental Education Activity Guide