Community Is… Community Isn’t

About This Activity

Students consider the factors that make something a “community” and then analyze a definition of community that raises interesting questions for discussion about the concept: To be a community, must members like each other? Do communities always serve a purpose? Are those who do not contribute to this purpose still considered members of the community?

Steps for Implementation

Implementation Step 1: What Is Community? Anticipation Guide

Distribute the What Is Community? Anticipation Guide and ask students to respond to each statement.

Then explain the Four Corners strategy and choose a few of the prompts from the anticipation guide to discuss. You might begin by asking students which prompts they feel passionately about discussing together.

Implementation Step 2: Analyze a Definition of Community

Explain to students that they will be analyzing a definition of “community” in small groups and capturing their ideas on a shared handout. Each group should assign a facilitator who leads the discussion and watches the time, a note-taker who makes notes on the handout, and a summarizer who presents to the class during the debrief. Share the handout Exploring Community in Three Ways. Read Goldsmith’s definition at the top of the handout out loud. Then break students into groups to complete the graphic organizer together. 

Debrief as a class by having the summarizer from each group share their key ideas. Depending on your class size, you might have two groups present for each row of the handout. 

Then discuss the questions they wrote on the graphic organizer.