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 ten books each day to assist with our Community Helpers unit. Students read to a buddy or by themselves and marked important pages with a Post-it note. The Post-it notes notated where they either read about how they help our community or saw a picture of a character 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 we did for the Community Helpers unit…
(And yes, I did the A, B, and C page for modeling.)
Then, I created the title page.
Here, I hole-punched 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!
Click Below for Templates of this Book
Additional Teaching Resources
Also, this Labor Day/Community Helpers unit pack really helped in the introduction part of our project.
(Link: Labor Day & Community Helpers)
(Link: Community Helpers Flip Book)
For more writing inspiration, check out this post on Teaching Opinion Writing Tips and Activities.