2.3 OVERVIEW

The student will identify and compare changes in community life over time in terms of buildings, jobs, transportation, and population.

SUGGESTED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

• Begin the session by telling the students that a community is place where people live, work, and place.
• Talk about the fact that communities can be neighborhoods, schools, classrooms, or friends at work. List the similarities between different types of communities to develop a list of community characteristics. For example: people that have something in common, work together, or have similar needs. Talk about how a classroom can be a community. What might they all have in common?
• Discuss with the students the characteristics of their neighborhoods with questions such as these:
  Are there houses, buildings, or both in your neighborhood?
  If there are buildings, what kind are they? What is the nearest store?
  Are there any public play areas such as a park or a playground? What kinds of animals live in your neighborhood?
  
• Have the students draw a picture of their house or the building they live in on the white paper.
• Have the students search in magazines for things that are found in their own neighborhood such as trees, flowers, stores, etc. and then cut out and paste or tape the pictures onto their drawing.
• Have the students compare and contrast their finished pictures with one another to learn about their classmates' neighborhoods.
• Review the types of communities in the regions of ancient China and ancient Egypt and the regions of the Powhatan of the Eastern Woodlands, the Sioux of the Plains, and the Pueblo people of the Southwest.
• Introduce the word population. Tell the students that population is the number of people who live in a community. Review the population of the classroom community and the school community. Have the students research to find out the number of people in their neighborhood community.
• Create a graph of the population of class and the school community.
• Introduce the word transportation. Tell the students that transportation is a way of moving people and things from one place to another. Ask the students to list different types of transportation. The list may include walking, bikes, cars, buses, trucks, trains, boats, airplanes, jets, and space shuttle.
• Have the students help alphabetize them, or classify them into categories, or rhyme words to them, or write a story with the words from the list.
• Create an acrostic poem: Write the letters that spell a type of transportation down the chalkboard. Have each letter be the beginning of a new word that describes that transportation.
• Use available pictures from resources and have the students create a simple time line showing how a certain type of transportation has changed from the past to the present.
• Review the types of transportation used in the regions of ancient China and ancient Egypt and the regions of the Powhatan of the Eastern Woodlands, the Sioux of the Plains, and the Pueblo people of the Southwest.
• Create a community brochure. In preparation for the final activity about communities, brainstorm with students a list of land areas, schools, stores, cultural events, or people that would "advertise," or show off the best features of their community.
• To help students in brainstorming, have available local newspapers, picture maps, or brochures that highlight geographical features or cultural celebrations held throughout the year.
• Tell students that they can work in pairs or individually to design and create a "Community Brochure" that would attract new residents or visitors to their neighborhood or community. Students can create the brochure by drawing and/or cutting and pasting images from existing publications.
• Let students share their completed brochures with another class. You might also consider planning a hallway display of Community Brochures near the front office or other visible area in your school.
• Tell the students that an invention is the creation of something new. Some inventions have changed the world, such as the light bulb and the telephone while other inventions have just made life a little easier. Many inventions borrow from the past and build on a previous invention.
• Tell the students that sometimes a failed invention leads to a completely different invention. Post-it Notes is such an example. At 3M the researchers were trying to develop a new glue. However the glue they developed would stick but could not hold anything together. Was it useless? Today this is the glue used on Post-it Notes, a very useful invention.
• Have the students select an inventor they would like to research and learn more about. Have the students gather information and share the information with the class.
• Create a class time line of inventors based on the research the individual students gathered during their reports.
• Have the students discuss how they believe the inventors and their inventions have changed the society we live in today.
• Guide the students to understand that new inventions have led to changes in buildings, jobs, transportation, and populations of communities over time.

WEB SITES

http://bensguide.gpo.gov
This is Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids.

http://www.civiced.org
Check out the Center for Civic Education.

http://www.kidsclick.org/
Kids Click! is a Web search for kids created by librarians.

http://www.virginialearning.org
This is Virginia’s Community of Learning.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/laic/
This Web site is entitled Learning Adventures in Citizenship from New York to Your Town.

http://www.hud.gov/kids/index.html
At Kids Next Door, students can learn about being good citizens and view interactive sites.

http://www.planning.org/kidsandcommunity
Kids and Community is a Web site for exploring communities.

LITERATURE LINKS

Communities change over time in terms of buildings, jobs, transportation, and population

Isaacs, Sally Senzell. Life in America’s First Cities. Chicago: Heineman Library, 2001.
This book introduces the daily lives of people who settled in the first cities in the United States, discussing houses, clothing, schools, and work.