Through prior knowledge, personal accounts, books, and community worker visits, our class will step into the world of the people that make our daily lives easier. We kicked things off with a circle map about community. After a brief explanation of what's considered part of our community and the people in it, our kids began to show their understanding of their community.
Bus Drivers
From our Tree Map and Bar Graph created from the previous Transportation unit, we learned a few people in our class and school take the MTA bus to school.
Another tree map was created to map out the different types of buses we may see in our community. Their responses were recorded and a few kids helped draw and label the types of buses on our map.
Doctors
One of my childhood friend’s long journey of becoming a doctor has been fulfilled. After 8+ years of school, he’ll be practicing internal medicine in Pittsburg come June. While he’s still here, we invited him to come to our class to speak to our children about doctors.
During the visit, we would add what we learned from the doctor on the map with a different color to show our learning.
When it comes to information we will not be able to gather from our doctor visit or our prior knowledge, we turn to our non-fiction book about doctors. Each way we gathered our information was written in different color on our circle map.
The whole group contributed a bit and was sent off into centers. A smaller group had the task of adding pictures to our bubble map and more information. After centers, we came back together to go over vocabulary associated with doctors and the new information.
Paramedics and Police Officers
Paramedics
There’s a lot of confusion between the role of a doctor and the role of a paramedic. Our students were confused since paramedics help those who are sick or hurt. The role of a paramedic was approached from our students’ knowledge of ambulances. Almost all of our students have seen or heard of an ambulance in person. It was time to introduce them to the people inside operating the ambulance and helping those in need.
There was still some confusion about their role in our community and a meaningful way to clear up any confusion was to bring in a paramedic to explain what they do. Another childhood friend who is also a paramedic was invited to come in to explain what he does to our kids. Mr. Fahad recently finished his two year study to become a paramedic.
Next he pulled out a box of gloves, similar to the box Ms. Chin uses whiles he serves lunch. A few students understood why gloves are important for a paramedic. It was brought up that paramedics do not want to get germs from the patient and Mr. Fahad also added that everyone has germs and it also helps prevent the patient from getting sick.
One tool every paramedic must use every day is a pen. They must record any incident that happens and they wouldn’t be able to do it without a pen. Just as the paramedics record information, our newly learned information was also recorded on our circle map in pink.
Police Officers
Like the other community workers we’ve discussed, we started with a circle map about Police Officers. Their prior knowledge responses were recorded in green marker. We read two books about police officers and wrote down what we learned from books in orange on our map.
Mr. Raja brought his handcuffs to show the kids how they are used. Mr. Andy volunteered to demonstrate how handcuffs are put on people who needed to be restrained. It was brought up that they always cuff the person with their hands behind their back. One of our students asked why and we learned that it’s to prevent the person from hurting people.
Mr. Raja’s visit was very informative and very much appreciated. Both our police officer and paramedics stayed a bit afterwards to interact with the children.