My students identify with several different cultures (Dominican, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Honduran), and are poignantly aware of the ways in which these cultures differ. Conflict between cultures is very present in our neighborhood and school community. This lesson will allow students to begin constructing a meaningful, context-based understanding of what community is and why it is important to their everyday lives. This understanding will grow out of their explorations of existing communities on both a global and local level, as well as an imaginary community.
Here is a summary of this lesson:
To help students begin to think about what people who live in a community have in common (thereby beginning to construct their own understandings of what community is and why it is important), they will be introduced to an imaginary community that was established by actual children over 50 years ago in a neighborhood in Yuma, Arizona through the book Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran. This will incite discussion in various forms of the students' background knowledge of community. In small groups, students will explore several different Spanish-speaking cultures (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Honduras) and look for similarities shared by all communities. Community teams will participate in a community walk, identifying problems to be reported and fixed (this will also provide ideas for our culminating community-service project at the end of the unit). Finally, community teams will use recycled materials and photographs taken on the community walk to create model communities.
Although I now have a clearer idea of what essential understandings are, I'm still having some trouble designing the activities that make up the lesson so that they ultimately lead students to construct the essential understandings on their own. I would really appreciate some feedback in this regarding this challenge! Thank you.
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