Lesson 2 -- It Begins with Good Instruction

Grade 2 -- Social Studies

Concept: Community

Key unit principles:

• Community members live and work together to help the community.
• Members of communities have different roles that support the community.
• Animal communities are sometimes like human communities.
• Communities have rules to protect their members.
• Communities cannot exist without the support of their members.

As a result of this learning experience, students should be able to:

• Know (facts) -- The elements of a community, similarities and differences between human and animal communities
• Understand (principles) -- Communities have rules to protect their members. Communities cannot exist without the support of their members.
• Do (skill) -- Describe, compare

Background:

Students in this 2nd grade class are studying communities. At this point, they are examining ways that animal communities are like and unlike human communities. They have already viewed a video about ants, read about bees, and individually selected another animal to learn about.

Today's experience:

To help students understand the elements of a community and how they might apply to animals, the teacher has created a tiered activity using blue and green cubes. Both cubes ask students to describe, compare, tell their feelings about, tell the parts of, use, and tell good and bad features. The teacher assigns students a blue or green cube depending on students' performance levels.

Students using the blue cubes are currently performing at or below grade level in reading and writing. According to the tasks listed on the cube, this group will

1. Describe an ant community in pictures or words.
2. Compare an ant community to their own community in pictures or words.
3. List words that describe their feelings about watching an ant community.
4. Describe the parts of an ant community and what goes on in each part by using words or pictures or by building it.
5. Describe a way that an ant community helps them understand living and working together in a community.
6. List the good and bad things about an ant community.

Students using the green cubes are performing about or well-above grade level in reading and writing. This group will

1. Describe an ant community using at least three sentences, with at least three describing words in each sentence.
2. Use a Venn diagram to compare an ant community with the community of the animal they selected.
3. Pretend that ants think like people. Now write about and draw a cartoon of what you think an ant feels like as it goes through a day in its community. Do the same thing with another kind of animal from a different sort of community.
4. Make a diagram of an animal community, label the parts, and describe what each part is for.
5. Write a rule for living together in a community and describe how it would be useful in two different communities.
6. Write a song or draw a picture that describes what you think is best and worst about being part of a community.

Students begin by sitting at a table with other students who are using the same color cube. Students each take a turn rolling the cube. If the first roll turns up a task the student doesn't want to do, the student is allowed a second roll. As they work on their own tasks, students can also help one another.

When the tasks are complete, students move into groups of four or five students who did the same task on the same colored cube. Here they share their varied ideas and approaches to their task.

Note that later in the unit, students who worked on blue cube tasks will do some of the green cube tasks in small groups or working directly with the teacher.

Note: Adapted from How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms, by Carol Ann Tomlinson, 1995, pp. 54-56. Copyright ASCD.

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