Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Relationships - Working Together (3rd - 5th grade)







One of our 5th grade Houghton Mifflin reading themes is called "Person to Person" where we read texts about people working together, interacting, and helping each other. I got this simple activity out of the Houghton Mifflin teacher's guide, intended to use as you the theme, but I saw a lot of opportunity for other applications of it, even at a primary level. Students fold a piece of paper in half and trace a cutout of a person, leaving one of the arms uncut on the folded side (this will link the 2 person cutouts together as a chain). See the photos for a clear explanation.



The idea is to have the students think of a relationship between 2 people, such as a coach/athlete or friend/friend working together. On the head of the cutout, they write the 2 roles (i.e. "coach" on one, "athlete" on the other). On the belly of each person, they can bullet some ideas of how each person benefits from the working relationship. So on the "coach" belly, a student could write "learns to teach; feels proud; helps the community" and on the "athlete" belly, a student could write "learns new skills; gains confidence; experiences success" or something along those lines.



The same type of cutout could be used for an activity where students analyze and explain the relationship between 2 characters in a novel. At a primary level, the teacher could provide a stencil for students to trace the person cutout. The students could label each one as a different community worker, and they could list ways that those 2 might work together in a community.

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