Final communities Day

On our final scheduled session, we managed to wrap up some loose ends. We spent the first 20 minutes completing the arts and social studies post-tests to be able to measure the students' understanding of the vocabulary. Afterwards, we had the students move into their "community" groups of rural, suburban, and urban.

I hung the Delaware River Valley map we'd been working on before and we reviewed the parts of the river and what states appeared on our map, and asked "What's Missing?" The students all called out- "Our towns!" we reviewed where our urban areas of Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Delaware were on the map. Cindy brought over the community concentric circle graphic to help us remember how our communities would be arranged. We talked a bit about why the urban areas developed near the river and asked the students to think about where they should place their own town on the map.

We passed their narrative books back to the children for them to read each other's books while I invited groups up to the fabric map to pin their town in place. The map came to life with their colorful applique towns attached. The students really enjoyed getting to read their classmates stories!

To complete the final piece I've been stitching the towns down, and it will have a border fabric to bind the edges. We'll have some more time before the end of the school year when I will return to install the piece and work with the children a bit more.

I'll be posting the post-test results soon, as well as an image of the final product.