Web Resource for Social Studies: Our Community

Hello All!

I hope that you are all enjoying your weekend. I have been searching around the web for some good resources to use in my classroom and I have found another great site that is all about Africa from children's point of view. This website is called Africa for Kids and it is a wonderful website in which kids from four different areas in Africa have taken photos to represent what their lives are like. There are also thumb piano songs (traditional instruments used in Africa), activities on making masks and some folktales. The website is done from a kid's point of view so it is a great way for other children to relate and connect with these kids. There are many ways in which this web resource can be used in the classroom, but I have selected to use the website with Grade Two students in Social Studies covering the topic of Our Community. The activity that I will describe will meet the following objectives from the Evergreen Curriculum:

Knowledge Objectives

Students will know that:

• people belong to groups like neighbourhoods and communities.
• communities have similarities and differences .

Skills/Abilities Objectives

Students will:

• identify the components of a local neighbourhood and community.

Attitudes/Values Objectives

Students will:

• appreciate the similarities and differences of communities.

Citizen Action Objectives

Students may:

• work cooperatively in group tasks.

Since Grade Two students are still quite young, I would put the Africa for Kids website up onto the data projector and as a class we would navigate through the website and discuss the different photographs the students have taken and what their lives are like in Africa. We would compare their lives to what our lives are like here in Canada. Then as a class we would brainstorm what we could take pictures of in order to share what our lives are like here in Canada with the rest of the world. Once the students have brainstormed many different possibilities we will select the best photographs to take. Then the students will be broken up into groups and each group will be responsible for taking a couple of different photographs and coming up with a short write up about each photograph to put on to our own website. Once the photos have been taken and the writes up written. I will create a website that shares what the life of a Grade Two student in like in Canada.

Using this website would enhance learning because it allows the students to see what life is like Africa for students of similar ages to them. This lets the students make real world connections to other children and it teaches them that life outside of Canada can be very different, but also similar. By seeing pictures that are up to date this really makes the learning experience relevant to the students and I believe they will learn more from seeing very detailed photos with explanations from other students than they would by just reading a book. I also believe that by having the students take photographs and come up with a write up of their own will have them really think about what their lives are like compared to the lives of other children. They will begin to really appreciate what they have and the educational experiences they receive. The students will also appreciate that other communities around the world are very different from ours, but that we are also very similar. I think that using this web resource and having the students do their own website would be an excellent learning experience for students and they would have a lot of fun along the way!

I hope that this resource and activity will be something you can use with your own students. Good luck and have fun!