Children learn that the community has four sectors: business, government, nonprofit, and family. The children may walk through an area in their local community to identify which sector is represented by different places. As an alternative, they may look at a local map.
The children explore attributes of the community in which they live. They compare ways to be generous in rural, urban, and suburban communities.
The children recognize they form a community when they are brought together for a common purpose. They are encouraged to be philanthropic within interest groups, schools, and families to build trust and for the common good of the community.
This lesson introduces the definition of a community and explores how communities come together to help or address a need.
Photo credit: Woodward Downtown by Becky McCray is licensed under CC BY 2.0
With the Nobel Peace Prize as an example of an award given for improvements to the common good, the young people list descriptors of people and organizations in their community or families who exhibit generosity and promote peace in some form.
This lesson introduces Alfred Nobel and his legacy, the Nobel Peace Prize.
By reading about her life and her work, students will understand how Mary Eliza Church Terrell’s writing and activism brought about change for African Americans and women.
Students identify causes they care about and related nonprofits or community resources. They use writing as a tool to make a difference, using persuasive writing techniques.
Students will summarize the words of Rachel Carson and describe the impact one woman writer had on the world and our environment by reading Part I of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Al Gore's 1994 introduction to the latest printing of the book.
Students will recognize the linguistic strategies that Alice Walker uses in her introduction to Anything You Love Can Be Saved that persuade readers to believe in her causes, and thus begin to think about techniques that they can use in their own activist writing, which they will do in the final lesson of the unit.