Learning About The Community

As part of one of the primary units, the students are to learn about the community and their surroundings. Mako's job is to teach them about the different jobs in the community, such as policeman, firefighter, teacher, doctor, dentist etc. Every other day, I prepare classroom materials for Mako to use during her lessons everyday. I'm not particularly experienced in planning lessons however for students ages 5-6, I don't think it's too difficult for myself to handle! 

The students had already been introduced to the 'community' at the end of last week and therefore had some fresh ideas in their head when it was time to brainstorm. On Thursday, I came up with the idea of creating some sort of 'map of the community' - a group work activity for them to demonstrate what they know and have learnt about the community. Mako thought this was a great idea and went ahead with it! ^^ I

Mako actually started this map activity on Friday afternoon with the other class but all gap students have half days on Fridays so we finish at 1:30/2:00pm and I didn't get to watch the other class start this activity. Today the other class had the opportunity to work on this fun activity and it was great to see the students thinking hard about what is going to be put on their map and how careful they were with their colouring, cutting and sticking! It's amazing to see how creative children are nowadays ^__^ 

The purpose of this task was to teach the students that not only is the school a part of the community, but our 'community' begins with our family and ends with the rest of the world. And within these stages, there are lots of different jobs that help the community to work - to function properly. The students are at the age where they need to know what job is what and who does what. 

Here are some images of the students and their maps. None of the groups finished their maps and will have the chance to finish them on Wednesday when they have English class again. 

- Tiffany