Geography
• Use grid coordinates to locate features of local areas on maps.
• Create a map of school, neighborhood, and community.
• Identify locations suited to specific activities or functions.
• Construct a community model and incorporate local geographic and human features.
• Use samples from local ecosystems to convey information about ecosystems and their changes.
• Investigate origins of local street names.
• Plan changes in street names, community features, and structures to be more consistent with the cultural, historical, and geographic features of the local area.
• Visit a local community. Compare and contrast it with own community.
• Develop reciprocal relationship with students from another community. Create projects to teach students from other areas about the cultural and physical systems of communities.
• Investigate physical systems (e.g., water cycle, erosion, and glaciation).
• Identify and describe physical landforms in your area, including how they were formed or changed by physical systems or events (e.g., rivers, glaciers, earthquakes, volcanoes).
• Examine different habitats of your local area.
• Examine local resources and the ways they are used in local communities.
• List different modes of transporting goods, information, and services in your community and what types of jobs are needed for them.
• Use technology to gather, sort, and organize information for a variety of purposes.
• Judge the accuracy, value, and relevance of information gathered from a variety of sources (e.g., media, newspapers, Internet).
Government
• Compare the figures of authority in a variety of communities.
• Develop, review, and revise classroom rules.
• Use regular classroom meetings to solve problems.
• Review and practice skills for conflict resolution within the family, the school, and the community.
• Define personal and collective power by role-playing appropriate and inappropriate ways of using it.
• Determine who has the authority to implement and uphold the rules within various situations (e.g., classroom, school, community, government).
• Consider the consequences of laws and rules and the limitations imposed on the individual.
• Interview community members involved in local issues and identify their positions.
• Identify a community problem and write letters to a newspaper editor and/or local and state officials.
• Visit a local newspaper, radio station, or Web site to determine how communication makes the world a global community.
• Discuss local elections (e.g., school board, city council, mayor).
• Learn how decisions are made concerning local resources (e.g., subsistence, river management).
• Use literature, art, and music to investigate cultural diversity and current issues.
• Read biographies of people involved in political and social changes, including biographical sketches of people in local communities.
• Use technology to gather, sort, and organize information for a variety of purposes.
• Use media sources to follow pertinent current events and begin to critically analyze the information gathered.
• Learn about community service and volunteering. Consider community benefits as well as personal rewards derived from community projects.
• Participate in a school or community service project.
• Discuss the effects of local industry on your community and determine factors that influence the economy.
• Invite community members in to discuss various occupations and the skills they require (e.g., reading, writing, math).
• Assess factors of supply and demand on a school project.
• Develop and practice disaster drills at school and at home, including evaluating current safety of classroom.
History
• Make a historical time line of the Kenai Peninsula.
• Study history of your community and the Kenai Peninsula using pictures, interviews of elders and others, artifacts, visits to historical sites, and books.
• Prepare a presentation on local history incorporating drawings, photos, interviews, and music.
• Examine past and present seasonal subsistence activities of local people, exploring cultural traditions and conflicting beliefs.
• Compare and contrast past and current needs of the community, including food, shelter, recreation, and kinds of work.
• Examine changing demographics in our communities.
• Write and illustrate events from personal, family, or community history.
• Examine Denaina, Russian, and European influences on the communities of the Kenai Peninsula.
• Explore how the development of roads and transportation has influenced our communities.
• Plan and carry out a community project.
• Relate the life of an early family to a present day family. Include perspective on careers/work affecting men, women, and children.
• Study history through interpretations in the arts and literature.
• Read a variety of books to compare and contrast historical fiction and interpretations.
• Read diaries and journals representative of historical figures and events, including significant local individuals.
• Discuss what types of jobs may be needed to handle emerging global issues.
• Use technology to gather, sort, and organize information for a variety of purposes.
• Judge the accuracy, value, and relevance of information gathered from a variety of sources. |