Lesson One (optional)
Begin Reading Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman
Lesson Objective: Students will be introduced to the concept of community by reading the first half of a book describing a community very different from Humboldt County. Guided by class discussion, students will begin to identify the characteristics of communities and the benefits of belonging to a community.
Materials:
Procedures:
Introduction
Explain that over the course of this lesson unit, students will be discussing communities -- what makes a community, how they are alike and how they are different, how our community has changed over time, and what we think our community will look like in the future.
Explain to the students that they will be reading the book Seedfolks written by the author Paul Fleischman. Write the book title and author's name on the chalkboard. Explain that the book is the story of a neighborhood that undergoes a change. Do not tell the students where the story takes place, what kind of neighborhood it is, or what people live in the neighborhood. A series of discussion questions will help them answer all of these questions based on "clues" in the story. Tell them the book is divided into chapters. Each chapter is written from the perspective of a person that lives in the neighborhood. By listening to each of their stories, the changes taking place in the neighborhood will unfold.
Development
Begin by giving each student a handout made from Student Handout Master 1, "Seedfolks Diary." Ask them to write answers to the questions as they listen to the story. Tell them that they will turn in their diary after finishing the book. Read the first three chapters (Kim, Ana, and Wendell). After reading those chapters, use the questions from the student diary for class discussion:
What kind of building do Kim, Ana and Wendell live in? The characters in the story live in apartment buildings. Ana describes looking out her window at 48 other apartment windows (p. 4) and Wendell relates that he lives on the ground floor of Ana's apartment house (p. 9).
What season is it where they live? How do you know? The story begins in the early spring. Kim describes the icy April wind turning her cheeks to marbles and the cold, hard ground after the snow had melted (p. 2). Later, when Wendell goes to Ana's apartment, he looks through the binoculars to see the plants wilting in the May heat (p. 10).
What did Ana discover when she dug in the vacant lot? How did she feel about what she'd done? When Ana went to the vacant lot and started digging she found the beans that Kim had planted (p. 7). She thought that Kim was burying money, drugs, or guns and felt bad when she learned the truth, as if she'd "read through her secret diary and had ripped out a page without meaning to" (p. 7).
After answering the questions, continue reading the next three chapters (Gonzalo, Leona, and Sam). After finishing those chapters, use the following questions for discussion:
What did Leona want to change about the vacant lot? How did she change the situation? Was it difficult or easy work? Leona wanted to get rid of all the garbage in the vacant lot. She describes garbage piled "as high as your waist" (p. 19). First she tried to change the situation by telephoning City Hall. She got no action, however (p. 20-21). Then she decided to go in person to the Public Health Department (p.22). Her work was difficult and time consuming and she had to be persistent in order to make a change.
What did Sam notice about the people in the garden on a busy Saturday? Sam noticed that the people in the garden copied the neighborhood -- "the blacks on one side, the whites on another, the Central Americans and Asians toward the back" (p. 26). The Gibb Street neighborhood is very diverse. Kim is from Vietnam, Ana describes the Rumanians, Slovaks, Italians, Negros, Mexicans, and Cambodians that have lived in the neighborhood, and Gonzala is from Guatemala.
Lesson Closure:
Asking the children to summarize what they have heard provides a good opportunity to introduce the three components of community wealth -- the people, the economy and the environment. Ask the students what they know about:
The people of the neighborhood (various ages, ethnically diverse)
The environment of the neighborhood (urban, spring, cold)
The economy of the neighborhood (poor and middle class)
The students should turn in their Seedfolks diary with the completed questions at the end of Lesson Two.
The students have had their first introduction to understanding and identifying communities. They will continue with a general discussion in the next day's lesson and then move to more specific discussions.