I love teaching about community helpers each year! I was very excited to find new materials that fit right into my curriculum and required little prep. My class this year consists of many ESL students who need real life visuals to help them easily comprehend each lesson.
I started off our week reading the Community Helper Readers. My students were very eager to get their hands on their favorite helper! Each book contains easy to read text with real life photographs. There is also a glossary for each book, which is a great way to throw in a little nonfiction text feature action.
As a class, we then graphed which community helper we wanted to be when we grow up using community helper stickers. And yes, I only have 13 students :). Can you tell that most of my students are boys?!
The following day, it was time to break out the Giant Community Helpers Sticker Scenes. I wish I had taken a picture of my students' faces when they saw the sticker scenes! I took a little time to discuss each place and to brainstorm what items we might see there. Students then started to create their scene. Each sticker was easy to peel and if a student made a mistake, it was super easy to remove and place somewhere else.
After our scenes were completed, students partnered up and discussed three places from their community scene. Even though each community was similar, I encouraged students to practice using the vocabulary, listening and speaking skills to discuss key facts.
To add writing into this lesson, have students write a narrative story based on a walk in their community using their sticker scence as a guide. This is the model I wrote as a think aloud with my class. I focused on one main idea and the use of transitonal words.