Unit 1: People in Communities. (Region).

Background Information

In her book The House on Maple Street, author Bonnie Pryor uses the discovery of a broken china cup and an arrowhead in the backyard of a fictional house on Maple Street to introduce the 300-year history of this site.

She begins by showing the site when it was a forest, then when it was an Indian village where an arrowhead was first dropped by a young Indian boy as he played with his friends. From the Indian village she moves on in time to show the site as a home to settlers who were moving westward to start a new life. It was at this point in the neighborhood's history that the cup from a little girl's china set was accidentally buried in a rabbit hole.

Over the years, the site became farmland and finally a residential neighborhood, where the reader meets the family living on Maple Street who discovered the artifacts.

 
                    Unit Skills: Students learn to 
 
                    * define the component parts 
                      of a community; 
                    * identify how location affects 
                      people's lifestyles; 
                    * identify similarities and 
                      differences among U.S. and 
                      world communities. 
 
                    The activities listed below 
                    suggest ways of presenting 
                    and enriching the content and 
                    skills in Unit 1. The activities 
                    correspond to days 1 through 
                    6 on the page 2 calendar matrix. 
 
                    What Is a Community? 
 
                    Have students look at the 
                    picture of Washington, 
                    D.C., on the book cover. 
                    Ask: What things do people 
                    who live in this city 
                    need? (Food, water, jobs, 
                    clothing, shelter, etc.) Guide 
                    discussion to help students to 
                    understand that people in 
                    communities serve one another. 
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