Week 5: Active Learning

It was such a fun week in first grade social studies! This week, we concluded our unit on families near and far with a cumulative project where students had to propose an idea that would help solve a problem within our school community. This project was adapted from the InquirEd curriculum. The inquiry question for the unit was “how can we bring families together to form stronger communities”. For my group of students, it made the most sense for us  to concentrate on solving a problem within our school community- so this is what we did. Students used the knowledge that they have obtained throughout the unit to create a project that reflected their knowledge on how to take informed action within a community. 

Ultimately, this project was a service learning experience. A service learning experience “focuses on student learning a process for activism in the community,” which students did through conducting this project. This type of learning “engages students in problem based learning” (Kopp, 2017). Outlined below is how we went about conducting the project- it took 4 lessons for students to complete. 

To start off the lesson, I discussed with students that we would be creating a project to help solve a problem in our community. To activate their background knowledge, I reminded them that over the past few weeks we have read multiple stories about problems in communities and how people worked together to solve these problems. 

First, I asked students to think about a community that they were a member of. Students had a few moments to think about communities they are members of and as a group we came up with a list of communities that they were a part of. Attached below is the list that the students came-up with. They were able to explain how they were a member of that community. 

As a group, students came to the conclusion that we are all part of the school community, so we should concentrate our project on something that could help the school community. Then we started to think of different problems that we have in our school community. Students engaged in a think-pair-share opportunity to discuss with a peer a problem that we had in our school community. Then, students came together and shared their ideas with the group. Many of the students had similar ideas and we consolidated their ideas into this list. After creating the list, students had the opportunity to think about which problem we should try to solve in our school community.  Students had another opportunity to share with a partner which problem they thought we should work together to solve. They were provided with the sentence stem   “I think we should help our school community solve ___________ problem because ____________”. 

After students had the opportunity to share with their partners, students were able to vote on which problem they wanted to solve in our school community. Students voted on the problem they wanted to help solve was telling other students not to lose their jackets and lunch boxes. After voting students came-up with a list of ideas that they could do to help others not lose their items while at school. Attached below is the list that the students came-up with.

Again, students were able to vote on which idea they wanted to do to convince others not to lose their items while at school. Most of the students wanted to make a poster or create a video and we came-up with the following inquiry challenge statement as a group. 

The next day, students were put into teams that they would be working with for the remainder of the week. As a team, they were instructed to create team norms and rules. Before sending students off to do this, we read a read aloud about how it can be hard to work on a team but how working together could lead to stronger results. After reading the story, we discussed it and then talked as a group about ways we can be respectful, responsible, and helpful while working in teams. Teams sat in circles together and discussed norms and rules. They were prompted with multiple questions and each student had an opportunity to share their answer to each question. Students then drew a picture together on how they were going to successfully work on a team together. 

On the next day, students worked with their teams again to come-up with what they were going to do with their project (in terms of a poster or video). Two teams decided to do a poster and one team decided to do a video. Students were instructed to make a rough draft of what they were going to do for their project and present it to the class at the end of the lesson. They were also prompted to think about where they would put their poster, who they would show their video to, and how this would help the school community. 

On the last day of this unit, students put their hard work and ideas into action. They either created a final draft of a  video or  the poster that they were going to hang-up somewhere in the school. Students put a lot of time and effort into their projects and were excited to make the final draft.

Overall, it was fun to see students engage in this inquiry-based social studies task. They needed to come-up with an idea and then work together as a team to implement their ideas. After outlining the aspects of this lesson and reviewing the readings from this week, I would consider this task a service learning experience.