Let's Build a Community

In our Social Studies class, we were told we were going to create our own community. It was going to be up to us a class to decide what we wanted in our community. Once everything would be built, we would have to decide how to lay out our town. Syd told us there would be a problem, but little did we know that this problem would be as serious as it turned out to be. We also were not aware that this problem was the key component of our project.

Excitedly, we went to work creating our community. We started a discussion forum where everyone was able to put down what building they wanted to create to add to the town. A school, post office, church, and Starbucks were a few of the wonderful contributions that came to our town. I decided that I wanted to make a Hacienda. While a hacienda might not be "necessary" to others, I thought that our town needed one.  Hacienda is my favorite restaurant, so if I was going to be living in this community there had to be a hacienda. Everyone worked hard to create their buildings for the town. Once everyone built their house and one building for the community, we then had to work together to organize our town. We started out by taking large rolls of paper and laying out how large wanted our town to be. Once we agreed on that, we started placing our buildings where we wanted. Luckily, we were all on the same page when it came to laying out our town. We decided that we wanted all of our houses to be on the same side of the town. We chose to put our police station, hospital, fire station, and post office all on the same side of town. We also chose to place our school, daycare, and library on the same block. Roads were build and a parking lot was created to make our town more functional. Finally, we had to agree on a town name, "Dragonfly" and a town motto, "Live Creatively!"

While working on this project, I don't think anyone thought about the problem that was within our town, even though we were told there would be one. I think that we all forgot about the problem because we were so excited to create our buildings. Once we were reminded that there was a pollution problem in our community, we had to work together to determine how we were going to solve this pollution problem. Luckily, we were able to work together and come up with a solution.

I think that this project would work very well in a classroom at the beginning of the school year. It would teach our students how to collaborate and create a connectedness between students. I think that this project would teach our students how to solve a problem if one is to arise in our classroom community, like it did in our town. This project would help teach our students civics and how  everyone has an opinion. Even though we might not necessarily agree with someone's opinion, it is important to understand and respect that opinion. When it came to us deciding what we were going to build, we each had an opinion on what we thought was important for our town. Not once did someone put down someone's building because they didn't agree that it was important enough to be in our town. This would be beneficial in a classroom to teach students to respect each other's opinion.

I definitely am able to see how important it is to create a community, like we did in Dragonfly, within our classroom.

To learn more about building a community in the classroom check out the video: Building Community in the Classroom


Social Studies Blog Post #2