Community Helpers, Leaders, and Primary Sources

The concept of community helpers or leaders offers a starting place for teaching civics to young learners. Students can make a connection to the idea, reflect on their experiences with it, and ask meaningful questions about the importance of helpers and leaders.

A new primary source set, Community: People and Places, includes items related to helpers and leaders in a community. By modeling and then guiding students in a thinking routine of observing a source, reflecting on what it shows, and asking their own questions about it, teachers can support young learners’ work with primary sources and build understanding of important civic concepts such as:

• explaining the roles of important local community members;
• identifying helpers and leaders, including in their school, neighborhood, and town or city;
• describing the responsibilities of individual leaders to meet the needs of different people and communities.

Instructional Strategies

Select several sources from the set that highlight community helpers and leaders. Teachers might want to select items that reflect a range of people and places, such as:

• a health clinic in a migrant camp
• trash collectors putting trash bags into a garbage truck
• firehouse station number four
• a bus driver for a city’s transit company
• a donation box
• a meeting of the Cub Scouts 

Using these or your own selections, model how to make observations about an item. Show one item and talk through your process: What do I see? What people or objects are shown? Students might participate with you and add to your observations.

Students may naturally offer reflections about the image. Model reflecting and support their thinking with questions such as: What do I think is happening in the image? What does this image show about helping someone or something? Students may have their own reflections to share, as well as new questions.

Finally, encourage students to ask even more questions about the item. What do they wonder about? You might begin with a question you have about the item to help students get started. Students may need support in bringing their questions back to the ideas of communities, leaders, and helpers.

Teachers might follow this same process for other images or let students select an item that they want to explore. Depending on the needs and dynamics of their classroom, teachers could set up other activities that ask students to observe, reflect, and question but in different ways, such as with a gallery walk, primary source stations, and small group talks.

To close the activity, invite students to name community helpers or leaders in their school. Students could create their own source by drawing a helper or leader at work. In their drawing they should show what a person is doing (role) and how a person is helping (responsibilities).

We’ll be sharing more teaching ideas related to the Community: People and Places set in the coming weeks. If you use the set, we’d love to hear what strategies you have: Please share in the comments!