Social+Studies


 * Stair Elementary 4th Grade Social Studies **

Service Project/ Citizenship Responsibilities 4th grade Social Studies To go along with our save the Rainforest theme, we decided to tie in saving the environment and ways that will help rainforests. 1. Put the students into 5 groups. Have the groups brainstorm ideas that are important to them that they would want done in their community to improve the environment. These ideas could be issues or problems that their community is facing. Remind students to have solutions to their problems. After 10 minutes, allow one of the students from each group to present their group’s ideas to the class. Write the ideas on the board. 2. Vote on which service project will be completed. Have students add any other ideas to the service plan to make it better. 3. Plan a field trip to the site where the service will be completed. Distribute digital cameras to each group to take pictures. Tell the students that some of these pictures will be posted to a website to encourage others to participate. Each student may take 3 pictures. Remind them to get good pictures that show examples of why we need to complete this project. 4. Return to class. Assign each group a page on the website that will tell why the 4th grade is taking on this project. Each page needs to have its own theme. The students can sketch their ideas on a poster board. 5. When each group is finished, they present their ideas to the teacher and design their page on the given website. Each student will have a role. 6. Over the next few weeks it will be up to the class to collect materials needed to complete the project. On the website will be the date the project will start. It will also have a phone number to call to sign up (that way we can do background checks because the adults will be working with students). 7. Start and complete the community project.
 * Social Studies Academic Content Standard: ** Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities. The students will describe how people help to make the community a better place in which to live such as planning community events and volunteerism.
 * Objective: ** The students will design and implement a service project to be done by the entire 4th grade for the local community to improve the environment. The students will design a website to encourage other volunteers from the community to help.
 * Technology: **
 * digital cameras
 * computers
 * Description: **

This lesson would be considered **__ new and innovative __** because students are not often given the opportunity to create their own websites. Digital cameras are not often used within instruction but rather to document it, this lesson uses digital cameras in a new way by incorporating them into instruction.
 * __ New and Innovative: __**

**__ Research Summary: __**