Communities: Past and Present

Do you ever have those units that are, quite frankly, a little boring? While I think it's kind of cool to look back on where we've been to where we are now....well, 7 and 8 year olds don't always feel the same! I decided to give my unit a little "kick" now that I've been inspired by Pinterest to be more creative! (What an addicting site! If you haven't been there before, it's FABULOUS!)

Our standards ask us to cover how the community, transportation, population, and jobs have changed from the past to the present.

We started with transportation - something my boys really enjoyed! I created a Powerpoint for the students to help them visualize that we truly went from two feet (walking) to what we have today! After a couple of days of discussion and comparing what we use now to what was used long ago, the students created a "tall ship" sort, where they put the past "vehicles" on top of the sail, the present replacement underneath.



Ship Template
Clip Art

We then focused on the different types of communities and, after a great video from Discovery Streaming and a Powerpoint my students help create using Google Images, they then created a triorama about the 3 types.

This is my sample. (If you've never done a triorama, you cut a piece of 8x11 paper into a square, then fold corner to corner to make the triangle, making sure to cut one side to the middle - that's the "x". Then, you fold it over and glue to make the triorama!).



This is one of my student's. They did a great job! Not quite sure how I'm going to display them. (I'd love to suspend them from the ceiling but there's always that fire marshall thing!)


Next week, we're focusing on population and jobs. I have a few ideas playing around in my head. Hope this helps those of you who have to do a similar unit!