Sunnyvale Elementary students create ‘Thirdville’ community project

Sunnyvale Elementary third grade students completed a study on communities by creating a community of their own. We called it Thirdville. Each child contributed a structure of some sort, a house, a store, a school, etc. We all got together and discussed the best way to lay out our community.

We chose to make a “Mainstreet Community” rather than one with a downtown square. With 66 students in third grade this year we had quite a large community when all was said and done!

This turned out to be a really great hands-on learning experience for the children. You can read and study about a community’s needs and wants but nothing makes it more real for them than to be responsible for supplying their own community’s needs, making room for the wants, and deciding which is which.

We came to realize we couldn’t have 14 skating rinks and no police stations. The students were quick to figure out that, if we had two fire stations, they shouldn’t be side by side. They quickly began grouping our stores into shopping centers and our homes into neighborhoods. It suddenly became so real to them!

Their grade for this project came from several different components.

They received points for how detailed their structure was, how much it resembled the actual structure it was modeled after, and whether or not it met the size requirements. But they were also graded on their presentation skills as they stood and gave a brief talk about how the structure was made, who helped, and why they chose to make that particular structure.

Finally, they were graded on how well they worked with the rest of the group while actually building the community.