Submitted by: Wendy Dyal
School: Mehfoud Elementary
Summary
Students will become familiar with community helpers and be able to identify the community helpers within the school and local community. Using technology, the students as a class will research and become familiar with the jobs of community helpers and the role they play in helping the community. They will then use technology tools to demonstrate what they have learned about these community helpers.
TIPC Ratings
It is very early in the school year when Community Helpers are covered, and as kindergarteners, the students have limited ability in the area of research. During this unit, the students are engaged in research through their generation of questions and the guidance of the teacher in finding the answers to the those questions. Students use the pictures in books as research. They will also use their own experience talking to school faculty and staff and the discoveries made during the tower engineering project to convey ideas.
The students are grouped in pairs by the teacher. They are both given the task of taking pictures and interviewing a teacher selected school community helper. When looking at books the students are free to discuss amongst one another the communtiy helper costume they are going to wear and through this discussion will be better able to communicate their knowledge of the community helper when they are making the Photo Booth video.
When the students are tasked with creating a tower they learn through the experience what is and is not successful. They are able to justify their reasons for using the method or manner for solving the problem of how to create a tower, creating a tower with as much height as possible, and the ability of the tower to be freestanding.
The students are still at the very early stage of their knowledge of the computers and computer programs as kindergarteners. They are limited to the computer programs that they have been taught at this point, and do not have enough understanding to be able to determine which program(s) would be appropriate to create a product showcasing their ideas. However, they are given room for creativity in the creation of their Pixie project, the words they use when making their Photo Booth video, and in their generation of a paper tower.
