08 Dec Meaningful learning is hard work: Second grade community maps
The second-grade students were working in pairs, spread around the room, on the floor, and at tables. They had large, poster-sized pieces of graph paper in front of them. They were busy at work, talking to each other about their plans as they began to create their original community maps. As I watched the students, absorbed in their work of learning, I thought about how the community maps project exemplifies the type of academic rigor we aspire to at Schechter Manhattan.
The second-grade community unit began with the students considering questions about how communities are designed. What are the needs of people in communities? What are the values that underlie and guide the building of communities? To find answers to these questions, the students embarked on a process of research. The class went out into the neighborhood by our school, walked around, and observed what they saw. They gathered their observations- a fire department, park, food market, library, bank, school. Back in the classroom, the students discussed these observations and drew inferences from what they saw to figure out what values and needs are reflected in the community. They suggested that a library reflects the value of learning, a fire station the value of safety, and a food market with fresh fruits and vegetables the value of health.
Kitah Bet continued their research by inviting a number of guests to their class. An alumni grandparent, who is also a city planner professionally, came to visit. He shared what adults who plan communities consider when doing that work. The students asked him questions about what they might think about to better understand how communities are developed. A few days later, the second-grade students from the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester came to visit. They spent an afternoon with the second grade of Schechter Manhattan, comparing ideas about their respective communities. The Schechter Manhattan students learned the ways that urban and suburban communities are similar and different.
With this research completed, the students turned to the task of working in pairs to create their own communities. They wrote about the needs their communities would meet and the values that they would espouse. Then they started creating their maps. They practiced math skills, by drawing to scale. And developed social studies skills, by looking carefully at what they can learn from a map.
When the maps are complete, the students will do more writing. They will prepare descriptions of their community maps that point to the key features and the thinking behind them. This will be the basis for the presentations that they will give to each other as well as students and faculty from the whole Schechter Manhattan school community at their community maps fair. They will practice public speaking, sharing their work, and answering questions.
This is rigorous academic work. It requires practice and application of many skills- research, drawing inferences, writing, collaborating, drawing to scale, reading maps, design thinking, and public speaking. It integrates a variety of disciplines- social studies, literacy, math- to understand content and concepts deeply. It also asks students to think about values, thereby attuning them to those things that are most important to them, and the type of people they want to be.
School work like this is multistep and complex. This is not something that can simply be put to memory- it requires higher level thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. At the beginning of the unit it is hard for the students to see how it will all come together in the end. That is a good thing, because when learning tasks are challenging in these ways, then students can gain real satisfaction from their accomplishments. At the community fair, they will be able to turn to their peers and adults who care about them and say “Hey! Look at the great thing I did!” I am looking forward to being at this year’s community maps fair to see the students enjoying the success of their learning.
Shabbat Shalom
Benjamin Mann
Author’s Chair
Each week we will feature the written work of our students. We hope that you will stop back next week and see what they are writing and thinking about.
GAN
Gan students are planning out their fiction stories. After considering what the main character would be, they thought about the problem that the character would have.
KITAH BET
In writing, we are working on our story-telling skills by writing a story about an important event in our lives in chronological order, employing sequence-establishing vocabulary along the way. The work included are excerpts from students’ stories.
Click here to view work by Zeva, Avner, Daniel, Jonah, & Ethan B.
KITAH HEH
Nutcracker
Winter
Animals
Skiing
KITAH ZAYIN
For our literature unit on the Shoah, humanities students were asked to write a literary essay on their chosen memoir or novel.