Roles within Communities

Our current unit of inquiry is in the theme "How We Organize Ourselves", and our central idea is, 'Organization can help a community thrive'. At the beginning of this unit our students were asked to explain how the school is organized. All of them focused solely on the physical aspect of organization, and when asked about how the people might be organized, only a couple students were able to verbalize thoughts on this less tangible aspect of organization.

This was a great formative assessment to show in which area(s) we should begin our exploration. After some discussion, we came up with a basic list of  people who are part of our school community. We gathered photos of some of these people and worked in groups to sort them. In the next step we were challenged to find connections between groups of people.

This activity made us realize just how connected the different people in our school community are! Our next step was to examine the roles people have and how they help communities function, which is one of our lines of inquiry. We began by looking at ourselves in our school community. To which group do we belong? What are our jobs within the community? How do we help the community? Through the use of the app Pic Collage, we worked in partners to create collages of some of the different jobs we have within the role of a student. Check out our work!:

The students were so excited about this app and discussed how it helped them organize their thoughts. They decided they wanted to look at their roles within their families as well. So....we did a similar project through the help of both Pic Collage and the app 'Whiteboard'! Our ideas will be uploaded soon. Be sure to check back again today for that post!