School Community Curriculum Connections
Community Curriculum Worksheet
This School Community Curriculum activity is incredibly simple, but yields amazing results for teachers interested in creating overlays between their instruction and topics in the community. Before, during or after instructional units.
Before beginning of unit, use this worksheet as a way to generate a long list of topics in the community that students are interested in. Since the teacher already has an awareness of the learning standards that need to be taught, she can then triangulate between standards, community topics and student interest. Have students write down the names of construction projects they see, news items that occurred in the surrounding community and even buildings that they are 
curious about. Anything that is happening in the community is fair game.
Use this activity as a way to synthesize the learning within the local context, and have the students make the connections. We used this worksheet during the Transitions project as a way to generate story ideas. We called the 1 mile radius “our turf” and the stories therein were ours to share with students and community.