I am one happy teacher right now…it’s Sunday night and I don’t have the Sunday night blues!  I’ve got a week of spring break ahead of me!

Before break started, we finished up our unit on Community Helpers.  I’ve taught the unit in both English and Spanish, but this year I taught it entirely in Spanish.

There are so many community helpers that we could study, and I do introduce the kiddos to many of the different jobs in our community.  However, the unit really focuses on firefighters, police officers, and doctors/nurses.  This way, the kids learn vocabulary and more in-depth information.  Better than going a mile wide and an inch deep, right??

Lots of reading and writing activities are included in the unit, and the unit even has leveled books to use during guided reading!  The kids love it when our guided reading books connect to what we’re learning about in social studies.  They also do lots of writing as part of the unit:

Vocabulary picture sorts were also helpful.  In this sort, they had to cut, sort, and paste pictures that were related to police officers.  The categories were jobs, uniforms, tools, and transportation.  The kiddos also labeled each picture.

At the end of the unit, students chose a community helper that they wanted to be when they grew up.  Most of my boys chose police officers!  They drew a portrait of themselves as the community helper and also wrote a little paragraph about what they wanted to do as that community helper.
  

All in all, a good unit.  Even though the photos show materials in Spanish, the exact same materials can be found in my English version of the unit.  Click {here} for the English version, and {here} for the Spanish version.

Time to go revel in the fact that I don’t have to go to work tomorrow!! 🙂