Community Helpers Shared Research & Writing Project

Our first grade classes just finished up our community helpers unit and we had a blast! 

We decided to take this social studies unit and make it our shared research project to start off first grade. The kiddos did great! 

In this three week unit, we...

*read informational books about community helpers

*used our research skills to find important details

*brainstormed helpers using our ABCs

*created an ABC book using our pictures and words

During Reading time in their centers throughout the weeks, the first grade teachers rotated books in our classrooms so we got a new set of 10 books each day. Students read to a buddy or by themselves and marked important pages with a post-it note where they either read about how they help our community or saw a picture of them helping our community.

After about a week of reading and fun activities of community helpers, we made an ABC list of community helpers. The students came up with 24/26 of these. 

(Q and Y were really hard for us to think of on our own, thanks Google!)

Then we began our shared writing! 

This took several days. I buddied the students up for one page, so we did about 7-8 pages a day.

Each member of the team had a job (writer, thinker, illustrator, etc.)

Here are a few examples...

[And yes, I did the A, B, and C page for modeling.]

Then, I created the title page.

Holepunched the book together...

And put them on binder rings for easy flipping. 

It is now a daily part of our reading library.

Students can read through it during the reading center. It is located in the informational book bin.

The students feel so proud that a book they wrote is in my library!  

If you're interested in the templates for this book, click here! 

Also, this Labor Day/Community Helper pack really helped in the introduction part of our project.

 

(Link: Labor Day & Community Helpers)

(Link: Community Helpers Flip Book)