The community helpers project we did in our classroom was a great success.  It proved to be fun as well as interesting and informative.  As an inquiry project, students took leadership roles in going out and gathering information about different helpers so that they could have a better understanding of different occupations and the importance of each of these.  We conducted our research through interviews, literature, a field trip and dramatic play.  From this project I was hoping children would:

• Gain an appreciation for different occupations

• Become more familiar with the people who work in our school and what their different jobs are

• Discover  how literacy is used in different real-world jobs

• Use the research technique of questioning and interviewing

• These objectives were certainly met throughout the month-long project!

Introducing the Theme

        Before beginning a new theme or project, I like to put new materials around the classroom for the children to explore.  I find that this gets them excited and curious about the theme.  After they have had a day or two to explore the new items, I ask them what they think we are going to learn about.  This allows for an interesting conversation as the children think about what all the new items have in common.  For this project, I displayed books around the room that featured various occupations and helpers.  I put up a display of different occupations and I bought some great toys for dramatic play.  I purchased fire station, police station, and construction site sets as well as a community mat with roads on it.  I brought out different kinds of vehicles and people and child-sized hats (fire hats, hard hats, police hats).  I purchased a children’s tool box and I found some fire-fighter and police officer dress-up items.

        At the end of our day of exploration, we talked about the project and we did a shared writing activity.  For this activity we brainstormed and charted ideas about “Who Helps” and we talked about how we thought each of these people helped us.  This chart was then used for shared reading and finally displayed in the classroom for children to read on their own (read around the room).

Field Study

        We were able to take one field trip during this project and that was to the hospital in our area.  (We had hoped to also go to a fire hall but this did not pan out.)  Prior to the trip we talked about what we might see at the hospital and I informed the children that we would be building a hospital in our classroom after returning from the field trip.  Therefore it was important to look carefully around the hospital for things we needed to include in our hospital.

        The tour was great.  We got to see emergency area and the admitting desk.  We saw the pharmacy, the x-ray and plaster rooms, the chapel, we went into the stores and to our favorite, the nursery and more!  We saw all types of community helpers at the hospital including doctors and nurses, housekeepers, paramedics, security officers, volunteers, and a construction worker.  As we walked around I tried to draw attention to certain parts of the hospital that we would be including in our classroom hospital.

        Back in the classroom we discussed what we needed in our hospital and I showed some pictures that I took at the hospital.  I was especially interested in showing the children how the hospital organizes materials neatly so that they can be found again.  The bins in the plaster room were all labeled and placed on shelves neatly.

      The completed hospital reflected the knowledge that we had about how a hospital should look and work from the children’s personal experiences and from our observations during our hospital field trip.  Some children even took the initiative to set up chairs for a waiting room! 

The following pictures will provide a virtual tour of our classroom hospital.

        Once the hospital was set-up, the children had the opportunity to role play.  Two students took up the role of the admitting desk person and we had two doctors working at a time.  Patients lined up at the admitting desk and were required to record their name and telephone number for the hospital records.  The admitting person then wrote the patient’s name on a wrist band (thin strips of yellow paper) and taped the wrist band around the patient’s wrist.  Patients were allowed to wait in the “waiting area” or in the play area (they could go to other centers).  It was surprising how many children actually sat down with a book in the waiting area for sometimes a rather long time.

        The admitting person called the doctor using the phone to inform him or her of a patient waiting and one by one all the patients were seen and treated for various ailments.  During a visit to the doctor, many patients were given prescriptions.

Interviews

        I wanted to introduce the children to another research method, that of the interview.  Finding answers by asking questions is an important skill.  The interviews that we did not only helped us learn about different helpers but built language and communication skills, and helped children become familiar on a personal level with people they see in the community.

        I decided it would be beneficial to interview three groups of community helpers: helpers within our school, helpers within the greater community, and last but not least, the people who help right in our own homes.

        Our first step was to develop a common set of questions.  I felt this was important because the children would experience success in reading the same questions each time and it also gave structure and focus to our interviews.  The following questions came about through a discussion between the whole class and myself:

1.                How do you help us?

2.                What do you like best about your job?

3.                Is there something you don’t like about your job?

4.                Where do you work?

5.                How can we help make your job easier?

 We began our interviews with people in our school and moved on to people in the greater community and finally to the children’s own parents.   We interviewed:

-         our assistant principal

-         our secretary

-         our custodian

-         our librarian

-          two police officers

-         our priest

-         the children’s parents

For each interview, we recorded the date and time and the name of the helper.  The children took responsibility for asking/reading the questions and I did the recording (with some help).  After questions were responded to, I asked the children what I should write or if what I wrote was accurate in their opinion.  For each interview, I chose one child to be a photographer so that we would have a picture of each of our helpers.

        The parent interviews were a little different.  The idea behind this activity was to get the children to apply their interviewing skills on their own.  The children were given a “homework” assignment and were asked to return it to share with the class. 

Click here to see the PARENT INTERVIEW  (word document)

Follow-Up on Interviews

        The pictures that were taken of our helpers during the interviews and pictures of doctors, and nurses at the hospital came in very handy for some other activities.  First I made “helper cards” with a picture of each helper and a sentence reading “This is __________.”  We practiced reading the cards and as we did so we remembered our interviews and field trip.  I then placed the cards in a pocked chart at the writing center/post office (see below).  The children were invited to write letters to the helpers and then they could become mail carriers and deliver the letters to the office for distribution to the appropriate helpers.

        Because I used a digital camera for the pictures, I was able to make mini-books.  I titled the story, “Community Helpers,” and I made it into a pattern book so that children could practice their reading skills.  I made multiple copies so that I could use the book in small group reading activities as well.  Because the children knew the “characters” in the book and had memories and background knowledge associated with the “characters,” it was a high interest book.

Click here to view the samples from the Community Helpers book.

        Another activity involved using the big and little books titled, “Who Uses This?” from the First Collections Plus series.  This book follows the pattern:

        Who uses this?

      A doctor uses a stethoscope.

The big book was used for shared reading and then the small books were put in an independent reading bin, in the listening center with a cassette, and with an activity.  The activity was a pocket chart activity in which I had pictures of the tools used on cards and then on separate cards I wrote corresponding labels.  The children had to use either the beginning sound of stethoscope to match the word to the picture or they had to look in the book to find the matches.  This was also a good vocabulary building exercise.

Center Activities

Post Office:

        The idea for a post office grew out of Valentine’s day.  The children were all working on Valentine cards at home and on Valentine’s day they would deliver their cards into each of their friend’s Valentine envelopes.  We also made use of the real postal service by making cards for parents.  The children experienced putting the cards in envelopes and addressing and stamping (we used printed labels) the envelopes.  The children then waited for the cards to come to their homes and surprise their parents!

        Our classroom post-office consisted of mail boxes for each child, a sign (made by the children), and all sorts of writing tools, paper and envelopes.  A great deal of time was spent by children at this center and a lot of joy was experienced with giving and receiving mail from friends.

Dramatic Play

       This project invited lots of dramatic play.  We of course had our hospital but the children also role played the workings of a community with our community toys.  In the pictures below you see children working as construction workers measuring and sawing.  You also see children setting up a community on the play mat and using cars, and buildings.  This center required lots of cooperation and turn -taking.  In addition, the children were not allowed to drive a car unless they made a driver’s license.  The license looked similar to this:

Children had to draw their picture in the box and record their information on the lines.  At any time, a police officer could ask someone driving a car to show his or her license.

Art

        For our bulletin board display, I measured up paper to fit the bulletin board and then I drew roads on it.  The children painted the roads and the lots and we put it up as the beginning of our community.  Then we brainstormed things that we need in a community.  In the picture you will see houses, a grocery store, a school, a hospital, apartments, a church, a fire hall, a police station, a playground, street signs and various vehicles.  Children worked individually and cooperatively on making the community.

Closing Activity

        To finish our study, we did a whole-class graphing activity.  First we talked about different helpers in our community.  Then I had the children think about what they might want to be when they grow up.  I took a number of suggestions and wrote them at the bottom of the chart paper.  I included  “other” as one of the options in order to accommodate all children.  Each child then took a unifix cube and was able to place his or her cube on the graph in the appropriate spot.  We looked at the results in the end and marveled at how many jobs there are that they could do!  I displayed the morning and afternoon graphs so that the children could compare the results as a center activity.