Objectives:
– Students will describe and investigate the purpose of rules and laws in our community.
– They will describe how different jobs, as well as public and private institutions, help people in the community.
– They will answer the compelling question: “What makes a community healthy?”

Books:

I like to include a lot of books in my lessons. I am fortunate to have a lot of books available to us at our local library. These are the ones we read for this lesson, but if you don’t have access to these exact ones you can substitute whatever books you feel are appropriate.

• Our Values: My Community By Grace Jones
• Silly Tilly and the Royal Rules By Barbara Bakowski
• Why Do We Need Rules and Laws? By Jessica Pegis
• What Do We Buy?: A Look at Goods and Services by Robin Nelson
• Making Choices in my Community
  and Cities: How Humans Live Together

What makes a community healthy?

We explored this question by making a mind map. Then we added a new word to the word wall:

• Community “A group of people who work together and take care of each other.
  

We are going to be investigating the question, “What makes a community healthy?” by exploring three supporting questions.

• What is the purpose of rules and laws in our community?
• How do different jobs help people in the community?
• How do public and private institutions help people in the community?

First we read:

Silly Tilly and the Royal Rules By Barbara Bakowski

and Why Do We Need Rules and Laws? By Jessica Pegis.

Open Discussion:

• Why are rules important?
• What are rules?
• What are some examples of rules in the community and what is their purpose?
• What is a law?
• Why do we have laws?

Explore rules in our community

Added word to word wall:

• Law “Rules that help people get along and stay safe. Leaders make the rules, and helpers like police make sure we follow them.”

We discussed the answer to our main question: What is the purpose of rules and laws?

We had a wonderful discussion about how rules keep things fair and safe. The kids had some great questions to discuss such as, “do we have to follow all rules?” I wanted to encourage a lot of discussion in this lesson rather than lecturing.

To help the kids understand what a government meeting might be like, I showed them a video of a local Fiscal court meeting: https://share.google/cHRqVxtEv5IXlcCGl

How do different jobs help people in the community?

We read the book Community Helpers Then and Now by Bobbie kalman

Discussion:

• What if everyone wanted to have the same job in our community?
• How does having a variety of different jobs help our community?
• What are some other examples of jobs in our community?
• What are some jobs you might be good at?
• How do public and private institutions help people in the community?

Added new words to the word wall

•    Goods “Things you can buy”
•    Services “Help that is for sale”

It’s time to answer the big question:

What makes a community healthy?

We created a poster that includes how different jobs, public and private institutions, and laws help make the community healthy.

I created a graphic organizer to help the kids plan for their posters.

Finally, we watched an episode of the Tuttle Twins show: When Laws give you Lemons.

You can download the resources I created for this lesson here: