In third grade our reading unit has been focused around the social studies topic of communities. Throughout the unit, students worked to answer the essential question: How and why do communities change over time? They also focused on how life was similar and different from today, how time and place affect the culture and how the culture of a community changes over time.
In order to obtain information, students learned reading strategies that helped them focus on pulling important information from texts to support their understanding. We focused on changes that occur in the areas of culture, architecture, transportation, recreation, communication, and education.
After spending time reading secondary sources to research changes in communities, students were introduced to primary sources. A highlight of the unit was giving students the chance to look at photos of Goodrich School throughout history to note the changes in the building, the classroom, and the culture of the school.
Students made observations, inferences and asked questions while looking at the photographs.
I was very excited to share these photographs with the students. It was wonderful to apply what we had been learning to their own community. The photos gave them a lot of information about how different things were in the past. Students were very surprised to learn that their school was once a small one-room schoolhouse that eventually turned into the school it is today.
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