Living Locally

YouTube Clip of Sesame Street Theme Song 

1. What students could learn from this resource (VELS/AusVELslevel & learning focus statement).

Learning focus statements from VELS:

Humanities - Level 1

They investigate the relative location, direction and distance of their home, school, classroom, local parks, shops and other significant features of their environment and begin to understand the geography of their local area.

They draw simple pictorial maps from their developing mental maps of familiar environments.

2. How and why the resource would be used in the classroom for HSE learning (Prep – Year 2).

I would use the YouTube clip as an engaging introduction to a unit looking at our community beginning with something that may be familiar to them and has images of kids playing in their neighbourhood. After watching the YouTube clip I would have a discussion with the class about where they live, if they know what the name of their street is and what number house they live at. After the discussion I would get each child to go back to their desks and draw a picture of their house and including the name of the street they live on and the number of their house (if they remember).

The next lesson will focus on ‘our school’ and we will look at the things around our school, such as parks and shops in the local area. 

3. A brief description of how your resource/activity responds to an aspect or aspects of the readings for that week.

Looking at each child’s different houses and neighbourhood, students are able to recognise the school as being on of the ‘centres of their communities’  (Bunting, 2008 p. 27), as we all live in different houses and streets and we come together as a community at school. By giving students an ’open-ended, personally relevant task’ (Harris, 2006 p. 47), when drawing their house it gives personal meaning to the task and relates to their lives.