Our caring community

As part of our inquiry ‘Our Caring Community’ in term 3 the children in our neighbourhood were asked to tell us: - What is a community?  We used the Visible Thinking routine ‘Chalk Talk’ for children to develop their thoughts.  ‘Chalk Talk’ is a teaching routine to build understanding in a collaborative way.  Children were asked to write on a piece of paper what they thought the word ‘community’ means.  The term ‘Chalk Talk’ refers to the chalk/pen/texta doing the talking rather than our mouths (in our case it was the texta).    ‘Chalk Talk’ a silent visual conversation and children were required to write their thoughts without talking.

Here are examples of some of the children’s thoughts:-

 
 

 

(Sorry the photos are the wrong way around, but we can't change it. We hope you can still read the children's thinking.)

After presenting children’s written responses to the neighbourhood, the children further discussed the common thread of thought and developed some common understandings.

The following understandings of ‘What is a community?’ were developed by our neighbourhood.