Social Functions: School

We are starting a new topic in Social Studies in 1B: social functions. We will be exploring some jobs and institutions that play important parts in society, and using a new (to us) tool called Popplet to preserve our discussions. Popplet helps make mind maps, which we will be using to capture our conversations and to give the students a visual of their answers, the growing discussion, and the relationship between all the different parts. 

This week, we started discussing school. The students considered all the different people who have to work together to run a school, and tried to list everyone who works at our school. What are their responsibilities? What are their names?


Then we focused in on one of the roles at school: teacher. The students came up with answers individually about what qualities a good teacher should have.


The class then worked in pairs to talk about what a teacher is responsible for in a school and in a classroom.


We also asked the class to talk in pairs about possible ways students can help teachers so the school day can be positive and productive for everyone.

It was exciting for everyone to experience a new element to class discussions with this tool, for the students to read along, and we teachers think it's really neat to be able to preserve some of what our bright students come up with!