Grade 1 — Social Studies: A Community Walk

Overview

Students take a walk in the community to identify and locate an important landmark such as the community club, shopping centre, fire hall, hospital, church etc. relative to the school. Students take digital pictures of the landmark as well as other clues to help them describe its location as well as the path taken from school.

Activate

Students browse pictures books and selected web sites about communities, and draw pictures of three structures they think are important in their community. [Gather and Make Sense, Produce to Show Understanding]

Acquire

After a discussion about the local community, list the important structures, buildings and services. [Plan and Question] Ask students to explain why each is important. Choose an important building/service within walking distance of the school and arrange a walking trip. Students take digital pictures, draw pictures and stop periodically to trace the path on a community map provided, along the way, as a reference. [Gather and Make Sense]

Teacher Tips:
Create a simple community map for students. Identify the school and the important buildings discussed.
Take a digital video camera to record the route and reference points along the way. [Gather and Make Sense]  Make a file of the students' digital pictures and scan their drawings and paths so that the walk can be reconstructed digitally in class. Have students draw pictures of their homes for use in the final product.

After watching and discussing the video, as a class, students use some of the digital pictures, drawings and one of the student-drawn path, to contribute to the recreation of the walk by arranging the digital images in order on a wall-sized map. Students describe what they saw along the walk using relative terms. With the students, label the images and significant markers along the path as students describe them. [Produce to Show Understanding]

Teacher Tip :
The path may need to be modified as students reconstruct the walk. This path may be used later when students reconstruct the walk in pairs.

Apply

With a partner, students reconstruct the path for the walk using a map provided by the teacher, and organizing their digital images in correct sequence. [Collaborate] Students place their homes, including address, relative to the path, make an audio clip, using relative terms to describe their walk, label the components of their walk and share the final product with the class [Communicate].

Suggestions for Assessment:
Assess students' use of relative terms to describe the walk, labels for the components of the walk and words used to share the final product with the class.
Assess students' participation in a guided conference to think about using ICT to learn [Reflect]