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For Teachers

This second chapter covers the geography standards for second grade. Now that students have a firm understanding of what a community is, we move into the study of communities by getting students into exploring maps. In Kindergarten and First grade we had teachers construct a classroom box. This activity was designed by Dr. Phil Gersmehl and his wife Carol and is based upon some of the work they did in Harlem New York. In this chapter we once again revisit the idea of a classroom in a box, and present to you here instructions for making your own. We use two Michigan based communities for comparison in this chapter. The idea is that you can potentially bring a third to the table. The chapter closes with a discussion on how we impact the environment. We hope you’ll find many good connections to science in this chapter.