PolyToday: Community helpers

Have you ever wondered how you serve the community? This was the essential question posed to the second grade as they began their community helpers unit. They studied how people contribute to our community both in and outside of school. The Class of 2029 began with the basic definition provided by their social studies textbook, which defines a community helper as someone who 1) gives us ideas, 2) fixes things, 3) takes care of us or our pets, or 4) takes care of our community. As a way to connect their learning to the greater community, the second grade invited parents to join them in the classroom and share a little bit about what they do for the community - and wouldn't you know, every job that they learned about fell into one of the previous categories! Over the last few weeks, they've had more than a dozen visitors to their classrooms and have learned a variety of things, such as how authors come up with ideas for their books, what an architect does, what a patent is, and how you can be a doctor without going to medical school. Before each visit, the students prepared a question based upon an explanation given about the profession by the visitor's child, which made for some fantastic class discussions.
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