The students raise others’ awareness of the sense of community. Students invite another class to observe what they have done related to the homeless issue. Plus, students share a snack with the guests and let them know they are connected by a sense of community and trust.

Anticipatory Set:

Show the students two different fruits. Ask them to describe differences and similarities between the fruits using all their senses. Tell the students that when the fruits are mixed together in a bowl, they blend and become a salad—a new thing together. Tell the students that people are the same as the two fruits. When they are separate, you can describe differences and similarities. When you mix people together, they blend and become something new—a community.

• Before making the fruit salad, let the students handle and examine the fruits to compare sizes, shapes, smells, texture and colors of the different types of fresh fruits. Encourage them to use language to describe their observations. Although they don’t taste the fruit now, encourage them to describe what they know about the taste of the fruits as well as the sounds of eating the fruits (crunch, squish, squirt). Write on the board the descriptive words they use for all the senses.
  
  
• Prepare the fruit salad by washing and cutting up the fruits into bite-size pieces. Involve the students in the process as much as possible. When it is finished, show the students the mixture that makes one tasty salad made up of lots of good parts.
  
  
• Remind the students that they belong to a community of people kind of like a fruit salad. Just as fruit can be mixed in different ways to make different salads, they can be mixed in different ways to make different communities—the town they live in, their school, social groups, and so on. Remind students that a community is a group of people living in the same area and under the same government; or a group having common interests and likes.
  
  
• Prepare the students for another class coming in—another group from their school community. What you decide to share with this group is up to you. Below are some suggested activities. Tell the students your expectation of sharing and developing trust with this incoming group.
  
  
• Shared activity suggestions:

1. Pair up students so each guest has a partner from your class.
2. Read aloud a book about diversity—how we are different and the same.
3. Have students from your class tell the guest partners what a community is and why they are in a community together.
4. Make a favorite fruit floor graph with two columns for each fruit—one column for each classroom. Sit around the floor graph and compare the favorite choices of the different classes. Compare the different columns and come to a consensus about the whole group’s favorites.
5. Your students show the guests the different projects they did with homes, the descriptions of the school neighborhood, and the homeless service project.
6. Share the friendship fruit salad. Your students should pick up fruit bowls, napkins, and spoons for themselves and their partner(s). Develop trust between the partners by telling the guest to spoon out equal amounts for each person in the partnership.

Interactive Parent / Student Homework:
Put one copy of a book from the Bibliographical Resources in a canvas bag with a blank journal. You may make several of these book bags. Send a book bag home with each student in turn with the instructions to read the book with a family member and respond to it in the journal. Offer some suggested responses such as draw a picture of your family or tell how our community is better because of diversity. The families will be able to read the comments of the students and families who took the book bag home before them.

• Fox, Mem. Whoever You Are. Voyager Books, 2001. ISBN: 0152164065
  
  
• Hamanaka, Sheila. All the Colors of the Earth. HarperTrophy, 1999. ISBN: 0688170625
  
  
• Kates, Bobbi. We’re Different, We’re the Same. Random House Books for Young Readers, 1992. ISBN: 0679832270