City+Planning

=Week of December 8th and 15th, 2008= =Week of January 5, 2009=

Learning Targets:
 * I can make a list of wants and needs of a neighborhood. (Jan. 5)
 * I can build a realistic model of a building / draw a realistic picture of things in a neighborhood. (Jan. 6)
 * I can make decisions about a model neighborhood and explain my decisions.
 * Use learning targets from teamwork rubric; students self-evaluate their work as a team.

[|teamworkrubricv1.doc]

Make a list of what we want in our neighborhood. Separate by wants and needs. Students build the wants on the list. Photograph the block structures and print the photos. Students meet in groups of 5 facilitated by a teacher. Each group has a representative from each study group, and they discuss together how to place items in the neighborhood.

=Week of January 11, 2009= (this is a 2-day lesson)

//Learning Targets:// //I can use the team work rubric with my group and work cooperatively to build a city that people could live in.// //I can explain what a city planner does.//


 * Materials:** small printouts of students' buildings that they created from the "needs section" of a neighborhood, 1 sheet of blueprint paper per group, 2 glues sticks per group, 1 caddy per group, a list of other things you could add to your city for each group: [|Addingtocity.doc], one printed out rubric per student to assess their work as a team member: [|teamworkrubricv1.doc], show students the city that last year's students had made (post it on the board)

__Should the police station be near the school or should it be near people's homes? Where do I want to put streets?__ Sometimes people agree with what the city planner wants to do and sometimes they do not. Sometimes the city planner might listen to the people and what they want and sometimes they may not.
 * Opener:** Today you are going to be working in groups of five to plan a city. One job that people have is the job of planning a city. These people are called city planners. To become a city planner you need to go to college. Most people would also want you to have gone to graduate school. Sometimes city planners are called urban planners. Part of their job is to figure out where things in a city should go. They might ask questions like:

__Do a few examples with negotiating where things should go on a mock city with the whole group. Do a few examples of how it looks when students use the teamwork rubric to work cooperatively and how it looks when students don't. Explain to students what materials they have. Talk about the volume that needs to be maintained during this activity: a whisper.
 * Directed Instruction:** Today and the next day your job is going to be to design a city with a group of city planners. You have your building here. You need to decide where the things in your city should go. Sometimes people are going to disagree and this is okay. But you need to figure out ways to make a decision when people disagree. In order to make a decision everyone should have a turn explaining why they think something should go somewhere and then you could have a vote in your small group. Please look at the teamwork rubric as you work. We will be looking for groups who are doing a really excellent job working together.


 * Share:**__ At the end of the activity we will have a museum walk where people can comment on cities and talk about their motivations for cities. We can also talk about similarities and differences of the cities.

__**Display:**__ All of the cities can be posted outside the classroom. Both classes cities together can show that many neighborhoods are put together to create a whole city. For this reason be sure to have students name their cities. Also, before we put the display out we will outline the city in black marker to show city boundaries. This display can lead to next weeks' conversations to show how neighborhoods come together to for a city.