May 2007 Lesson Plan


Community Treasure Mapping
Grades 6-12
2-3 Lesson Periods

Objectives


  • Blackboard
  • Computer with internet access
  • Scanner
  • MS Word or PowerPoint
  • Email access to participate in forums and wikispace (not needed for every student, but at least one teacher, student, or administrator address is needed for each school group)
  • Community Maps (to be printed out by individual teachers – maps of your individual local community)

Suggested Procedure



Brainstorm/Writing Prompt
  1. Write the following writing prompt on the blackboard: “Where would you tell visitors to this community to visit in the summer time?”
  2. Give students five minutes to brainstorm a list of fun summer places they would tell a tourist to visit.
  3. Initiate a discussion with students about the places they would recommend:
    • Which places are fun or interesting to visit?
    • Why would you recommend specifically those places?
  4. Review with students the concept of global citizenship. If as a class you created a definition of global citizenship, make that definition available.
  5. Initiate a discussion with students about what institutions, organizations, businesses or individuals a global citizen might be particularly interested in visiting in the local community.
    • Which organizations or institutions would you recommend? Why?
    • Why would you recommend different places for a regular tourist than for someone you know is a global citizen?
    • Explain to students that as we all have the potential to be global citizens, it might be interesting to make people aware of the resources available in their communities
    • Lots of people are already working to change their communities for the better – perhaps more people would get involved if they knew they had support.

Group Work: Community Treasure Maps
  1. Divide the class into four groups. Assign each group to research the organizations, institutions, and individuals that work to improve the local community on issues of:
    • The environment
    • Education
    • Culture
    • Health
  2. Distribute community maps to each group.
  3. Instruct each group to locate at least four organizations, institutions or individuals in their community that work on their assigned issue (may also include schools, youth groups, extra curricular programs, officials, businesses, etc).
  4. Students should mark the location of each organization, institution or individual on their community map. Students should label each mark appropriately, to correspond with a detailed legend.
  5. On the legend, students should briefly describe each organization chosen, including:
    • Name of Organization
    • Address
    • Contact Person (if available)
    • Phone number or email
    • Major issue they work to improve (one sentence)
    • Why this organization is important

Sharing Treasure Maps: Wikispaces or Presentations
  1. Each group should scan and save their map as a picture file.
  2. Following the instructions, each group should create a new page for their community treasure map and link to it under the appropriate heading on the GCYP World Treasures wiki page World Treasures
  3. Encourage students to post in the discussion tab of each page questions, comments, and responses to their fellow students. Remind students to be respectful and follow the rules of the wikispace.

All groups should complete their wikispace contributions by Friday, May 25, 2007.

Teachers are asked to contact their partner teachers, Bozena Morawski (Bozena@ri.org) AND their RI-SOL country representative when students have completed their contributions. If completing presentations, teachers should email the presentations to their partners, AND the RI-SOL representative so they can be posted on the website. Presentations should be sent no later than Friday, May 25, 2007.
Please send your completed presentations to:
US teachers: Bozena@ri.org
Tajikistan teachers: gulshan@shoolsonline.org
Bangladesh teachers: sajeda@ri.org
Palestine teachers: Davina@ri.org
Afghanistan teachers: mumtaza@ri.org

“Community Treasure Maps” forum will be held Monday, May 28 – Friday, June 1.
This is an opportunity for your students to ask questions about their partner schools’ findings and contributions. Please have your students go online to your partner country’s wikispace and view their partners’ contributions before participating in the forum.

You can find the forum through the online country website:
www.connect-afghanistan.org
www.connect-tajikistan.org
www.connect-bangladesh.org
www.connect-middleeast.org

Bozena M. Morawski
Exchange Program Officer
Relief International - Schools Online
1575 Westwood Boulevard, Suite 200
Los Angeles, California 90024
Tel: (310) 478-1200
Fax: (310) 478-1212
Email: bozena@ri.org
Skype: bozenamercedes
Web: www.ri.org; www.schoolsonline.org