MT. VERNON, Ill. � Third grade Students at Dr. Nick Osborne Primary Center built models of prominent buildings that provide services to their town.
The idea is that the students will be forced to think about a certain business or public service and figure out what its purpose is and how it contributes to society.Â
Teacher Emily VanHoorebeke tasked her students with researching different locations around town including: movie theaters, coffee shops, and even town hall. It’s all in an effort to teach them about their community.
Some students got pretty excited about their research.
“I have heard from parents that said they’re actually wanting to go up to the post office people and ask them ‘What do you do here? What are some things that you do?’ so they really enjoyed it,â€� VanHoorebeke said.Â
In addition to learning how a community functions, they are learning how to work together to solve problems, just as a community does. Â
“Even other work that we’re doing, not even with our social studies communities unit, one student was struggling and then another student said, ‘Well I’m going to help you because that’s what communities do, we work together,â€� So, they really learned a lot,â€� VanHoorebeke said.Â
VanHoorebeke mentioned she currently is the only teacher that offers this for the third grade, but she hopes to start working with other teachers to bring this visual learning project to the entire grade.