Friday, March 26, 2010

Junior Achievement

I have my first day of Junior Achievement today. Gotta run over the lesson one more time. Elaine, Jacque, and Christine came over last night and we ended up going through it and I got some special tips from them. It's perfect because Jacque and Elaine are majoring in education, so I feel like I got some insight and they had good ideas.

I don't know why I'm a little freaked out by it still though. I have butterflies in my stomach. Last night I dreamed that I went around and asked them all of their names and it took up the whole 30 minutes to get around the room. The subject is "My Community" and, for my sake, I'm going to run over the points.

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1) Hang up the How does a Community Work? poster. (in my dream I kept going around the room trying to find a good place to hang it, but every time I thought I had a good spot, the teacher would just say, "no" and all the kids were staring at me, waiting. Nobody offered any suggestions!! frustrating.)

2) Introduce myself, JA, and my role as a volunteer. So, I'm Miss Kendra and I work at ABC Auto Parts (in my dream I asked them if they knew what that was and many of them did. I don't know if I should really ask them that for real though... lol) in the main office. I work in the marketing department, which means I try to learn what our customers want and make our company a better place for them to get car parts. I just graduated from college so it wasn't that long ago that I was in school, too. But school has been so important for my job and helping me to make decisions about life. I'm so excited to be visiting you today, and Ms. Hamilton is going to let me visit four more times so that we can talk about Our Community.

The reason I'm here today is because I am a volunteer with Junior Achievement (write "volunteer" on the board). A volunteer is a person who chooses to help another person or business, but does it for free. Junior Achievement volunteers help teachers talk to students about real-life business and why businesses are so important to communities. Who can tell me what a business is? It's really easy. A business is a place that sells things we need or want. There has to be people to work in those businesses, right? That's where we get jobs. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Think about who you know who has a job. What kinds of jobs do they have?

ACTIVITY
3) Define community. A community is an area where people live, work, play, and go to school. A community can be part of a city where people have many different jobs. When most people talk about their community, they usually mean their city or their neighborhood. Today, we're going to pretend that your classroom is a community.
(hand out mini poster worksheet) Take a look at this poster. What jobs do you see?
(point to each job as the students call them out and write them on the board)

(if I need to encourage discussion, I'll ask questions like...) What is this person doing? Why do we need this person in our community? Do you know someone who does this type of work? Would you like to do this type of work? Why or why not?

(hand out government worker stickers) These are stickers that show government workers. Match each government worker sticker with the one on the worksheet.
(watch the clock) Time's up! Now, can I get two volunteers? We need to keep our community clean. Will the community volunteers please collect the trash from the stickers and throw it away? Thank you very much!

Let's look at our poster again. How does a fireman help the community? How does a donut-maker help the community? Next time, we will be talking more about the Sweet "O" Donuts shop.

There can be a whole lot of different jobs in a community, can't there? Why do you think we need so many different jobs and businesses? Because the people in a community have a lot of different needs and wants. Communities need the special skills of many people working together.
What type of job would you like to do when you grow up?

(have the students write their names on their mini-poster worksheets and turn them back in. Ask Ms. Hamilton to write down the names of any students that were absent.)

Here is a magnet for you to give to your family to let them know that I will be visiting you at school. I will be seeing you again next Friday! Have a great weekend!
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Phew, ok, I feel a little better. Thanks!

2 comments:

  1. That sounds great!! You are so amazing! Let me know how it goes!!

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  2. Thanks! They gave me a curriculum, so it's not like that's all my idea... forgot to mention that. Definitely out of my comfort zone!

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