A New Term and a New Unit - and we start by defining some words

OUR LOCAL AREA - what does that mean to you?

Michelle got us started when she told us that our means something that belongs to us. Joe suggested that our could mean all of us in our class; our classroom community. We liked this idea!

Per's hand shot up in the air when we wondered about the word area. "An area is a space," he told us. Max said that you can play soccer in an area.

Because we weren't exactly sure about our third word, Giulia suggested we use a dictionary to find out what local means. This is what we found out: something that is local is near where you live; we decided that meant somewhere that you could easily walk to. Azri added that a local school is a school near where you live; one that you could easily walk to.

So we decided that 'OUR LOCAL AREA' means the space around our classroom; somewhere we could easily walk to from our school.

As so often happens during our discussions, we went off at a slight tangent and got to wondering about places near our homes that we could easily walk to. Does anyone have anything local? we asked. Tanmay, Evie, Maya, Danah and Michelle can all easily walk to a park from their homes and Isabella can walk to a playground. Justin has a basketball court within walking distance of his house. Giulia can walk to a post office but not to any shops. Fiona has a bakery near her house but she has to go by car to get to the other shops. Both Swati and Naoya have shops near their homes. Per has a local Co-op near his house and so does Joe. Joe can also walk to a Migros, like Dangi. Chris has a local Manor (as well as 2 parks, a school - which is not the one he goes to - and a garage) and Patricia can walk to a shopping mall.

So plenty of food for thought! For example, what kind of area do you live in if you have shops, parks, garages, playgrounds and schools locally? And how are those areas different from areas where you might only have a bakery or a post office, and need to use the car or the bus to get to shops, parks, garages, playgrounds and schools?

But most importantly for now, what things do we have in 'OUR LOCAL AREA', the space around our school?

Let's see how we can find out.....