Beyond Civics: Teaching Dragonfly Pond

After attempting the Dragonfly Pond activity in class, I was skeptical about ever actually using it as a teacher. However, when I found out that so many of the third grade standards discuss communities and civics, I begrudgingly took a second look at the idea. That's when I truly saw the genius of it.

As I said before, this activity can go far beyond just learning about what a community is and how to be a productive citizen. A well integrated unit could potentially cover every content area. For my three lessons, I integrated language arts by having them write persuasive letters, slogans, and reflections; I included art by having the students create posters and of course the buildings for the community.

In a longer unit, students could decide where in the world their community was and analyze the soil types that would be found in their community (Science standard 3.2.2), make buildings that are different 3D shapes (Math standard 3.G.1), estimate the length of different roads in their community (Math standards 3.M.2, 3 & DA.2), hold a trade fair where each student has a booth that represents their building in the community (Math standard 3.M.4), and much more.

This activity also fosters collaboration between students, since it is impossible to build the community without compromise and whole group decision making. These are obviously third grade standards, but with a little thought this activity could be used in almost any grade.

My first lesson consisted of a simple discussion of the different types of communities and what establishments would be in each. This was the resulting list:

The students were very excited to use the knowledge they already had about different communities to come up with buildings. They had just finished learning about public services, so those were eagerly included in the list.

After writing persuasive letters to their classmates about which community should be built and a nearly unanimous vote, the class chose to build a city.

My second lesson in this unit incorporated Earth Day and how the students would improve their community so that it would be more ecologically responsible.

The students wrote slogans to encourage others to participate in Earth Day and drew posters to spread the word.

                                                              

My final lesson for this unit was to have the students actually build the city. They were so excited to finally build it they nearly jumped out of their own skin, and once they had their materials it was chaos. The students worked individually for almost an hour on their respective buildings and they came out looking really amazing.

I could not have been prouder of the students' work and how their city turned out. It was an amazing thing for me to see, the students working together to decide where each building should be placed, as well as thinking up ideas as to what they were missing and how their city could be improved.

 Overall, I think the unit was an amazing success. I had the students write reflections about how they thought the city could be improved and if the citizen's would be able to survive if the city were real. They had a little bit of a hard time answering these questions, but I chalk that up more to lack of time than anything else.

To create virtual cities as practice for this lesson or an extension afterwards, MyMiniCity, CityCreator, and MillionaireCity are great resources. As an introduction to the different types of cities, I added Eduplace has a great interactive map for students to play with and learn about what buildings are found in which communities.