 |
| ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Printer-Friendly Version
- Students will compare and contrast four suburban communities.
- Students will communicate their online findings with classmates.
- Bookmark websites for the following cities:
Eden Prairie, Minnesota
La Mesa, California
Long Grove, Illinois
Cedar Park, Texas - Before students begin their exploration of suburban communities, choose a few states and have them use the Internet to tour the largest cities in these states. This information will help them as they study the differences between urban and suburban communities.
- Discuss with students the similarities and differences between suburban and urban communities.
- Tell students that you have set bookmarks or favorites for several sites that you want them to explore.
- Demonstrate how to use the bookmark or favorite folder to get to Eden Prairie, Minnesota, which is a suburb of Minneapolis.
- Explain that this site gives information about this suburb.
- Provide students with the Suburban Communities activity sheet.
- Tell them that all the information they need to complete the activity sheet can be found on the website.
- Encourage students to write notes about what they liked and disliked about each suburb's site.
- Have students complete their activity sheets as they explore the site during their scheduled computer time.
- The website activity is well suited for independent work, but you may choose to have students work in pairs.
- After viewing several suburban community websites, encourage students to draw a home page for a community website. This website can be for their actual community or for an imaginary one. Tell students to think about the features and sections that helped them get a good feel for the community as they explored different community sites.
- List large cities like Chicago and Los Angeles on the board. Ask students to look up area maps for these cities on a map website. Have students list the suburbs by their location in relation to the city: north, east, south, and west. Students can also use the maps to challenge each other with questions, such as: What suburb is northwest of the city? Is (town name) northeast or southeast of the city?
Students use websites from communities across the United States to study and compare suburbs.
Type:
Teaching Strategies
