Student Created "Green" Community

Our last IB unit is entitled Give and Take and addresses the limited resources in our world. Students were challenged to build a section of a community on the edge of a river as their culminating project. This is loosely based on our own community, so they were also challenged to add a community center, an amusement park, a college, a football stadium, a wildlife preserve and a power plant. Their communities should reflect their knowledge of renewable and nonrenewable resources and how a community reduces pollution and waste. In addition to this project, students also completed an expository writing about ways that they think we could help our environment. Those writings are also posted on our class blog here. We also experimented with a "Wall Wisher" which is posted here. Double click to add a comment of your own. I like Wall Wisher because it is so simple to add ideas (no account needed) although it is easily cluttered. You can also add links and pictures very easily. I see this as a good virtual space for students to post questions at the end of a unit.

We collaborated on this project with Mrs. Heaton's fourth graders from Mossy Oaks Elementary in Beaufort, South Carolina. They mirrored this process in their class and posted on their class blog. We are going to spend some time looking at the issues that they feel are important in developing their community, and how those issues are the same and different from ours. Thanks to Mrs. Heaton's class! (take some time to explore Mrs. Heaton's blog if you want some great ideas. Hers is a great example of how to effectively use a blog to add to the learning in your classroom...)

Students did a great job, if some of their ideas are a little simplistic. If there were more than a handful of days left we would continue to discuss in class for months. This is certainly a discussion they will need to have throughout your lives, and that was a big part of the message I was trying to convey to them through this unit. Students would love to hear your comments.

Give and Take IB planner here.