3FN8 – Social Studies – What Is a Community?

How do FreeNode lessons work?

FreeNodes are instructor-led schooling lessons with a unique approach, granting you the freedom to independently teach using a personalized lesson plan. This autonomy enables you to tailor your lessons to suit students’ individual needs, learning styles, and interests.

To use a FreeNode, read the provided class outline & follow the formatting provided for each class. Make sure to touch on the Theocratic Connection in each class. Follow the outline closely so it is aligned with our main at-home curriculum.

How Do I Use the FreeNode?

Read this lesson plan before class to familiarize yourself with the ideas and concepts you’ll be teaching the students. You may print this page out if you need to use it as a reference point during live classes.

This lesson is a guide, but feel free to expand on the content or decrease/increase what you teach depending on the learning levels of the students in your class or the amount of time you have to cover the material.

Can I show videos in FN classes?

Yes, feel free to include additional material to supplement the class lesson material. Videos, Physical Objects, Games, Activities, etc. are okay to share in live classes.

Videos should have no advertisements or logos and should be viewed by you before showing them to the students to ensure no offensive or questionable content is included.

The video should make up only 1-3 minutes of the live class and should not take the place of instructor-led instruction. Videos should be supplementary only.

How do bookmarks work?

Bookmarks help you keep track of lessons you’re going to teach in future live classes. The bookmarks you see are for all your bookmarked lessons across all grades.

You can bookmark a lesson by visiting the lesson you want to bookmark and clicking the “bookmark” button in the bookmark section.

You can remove a single bookmark by visiting a lesson you’ve bookmarked and clicking the “bookmark” button again to unbookmark it.

You can clear all of your bookmarks by clicking the “clear all bookmarks” button. Be careful, this will erase all of your bookmarks.

Class Lesson Plan

Objectives:

Students will learn what a community is and how people work and play together, understand what a citizen is and how laws help communities, and learn how to identify borders on a political map.

Materials:

Whiteboard
Political map (showing borders of countries, states, and cities)
Visual aids (pictures of communities, citizens, laws, etc.)
Interactive online resources such as videos and games (optional)

Introduction (2 minutes):

Ask students if they are part of any communities (e.g., school, neighborhood, family). Explain that a community is a group of people who live, work, and play together to meet their needs. Communities come in different sizes and types, from families to countries.

Theocratic Connections:

Reference 1 Peter 2:17, which speaks about showing respect to everyone, loving the whole association of brothers, fearing God, and honoring the king. Explain how Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of a worldwide brotherhood, and just like any other community, we follow the laws of Jehovah’s kingdom while respecting the laws of the lands we live in.

Activity 1 – What Is a Community? (10 minutes):

Explain what a community is and how people in a community help one another. Give examples of small communities, like families or schools, and large communities, like towns, cities, and countries.

Optional: Ask students to think about how they help their family (a small community) or how their school works together (a small community).

Activity 2 – Citizens and Laws (10 minutes):

Introduce the concept of a citizen, an official member of a country or community. Discuss how laws are made to help citizens live together safely. Give examples of laws that are designed to keep people safe (like wearing seatbelts) and laws that help people become citizens in a new country (immigration laws).

Optional: Ask students to share any laws they know of that help keep people safe.

Activity 3 – Borders on a Map (5 minutes):

Show a political map and explain that borders separate different communities (countries, states, cities). Discuss how these borders help identify where communities begin and end. Show how political maps change over time as borders change.

Optional: Have students identify the borders of their city or state on a political map.

Conclusion (3 minutes):

Recap what a community is and how people work together to meet their needs. Emphasize that citizens and laws are important parts of a community. Mention that communities can be big or small and are marked by borders on a map.

Assessment:

Evaluate students’ understanding through class participation, their ability to explain what a community, citizen, and law are, and their skill in identifying borders on a map.