Community Helpers
Objective
Define community helper.
Identify the abundance of helpers in your community.
Express gratitude for/to community helpers.
Be community helpers in your school.
SEL Competencies
Social-Awareness, Relationship Skills
Benefits
Increasing knowledge and awareness of others’ strengths and contributions increases prosocial behaviors, such as showing concern for others’ feelings, sharing, and helping. Conversely, it decreases defiant and oppositional behaviors, such as lying, breaking rules, and hitting.
Core Concept
Widening our perspectives by discovering and expressing gratitude for often overlooked, yet important community helpers and discovering ways we can be community helpers in school.
Student Extension
Create a Community Helper Bingo card for your classroom.
1. Reflect & Brainstorm: Ask students the following questions to reflect on what they learned during virtual instruction:
- What is a community? (a group of people who live in a particular area or have a shared interest)
- What is a community helper? (someone who helps people and places in the community to be safe, healthy, and happy)
- What are some community helpers inside our school? Outside our school?
Remind students that we ALL need to be community helpers for our communities to be safe, healthy, and happy and that their school and classrooms are communities too.
Ask students to think of things they can do to help keep each other and their classroom/school safe, healthy and happy?
Ask students share their ideas, write them on page 2 of the handout.
2. Engage in service: Post the list of things students can do in the classroom and school to be community helpers in a location visible to all students. Have each student write their name in a BINGO space on page 3 of the handout. It is okay if some are blank. Post your community helper bingo card next to the list you created as a class. A student colors in their square on the BINGO card when you or another student catches them being a community helper. You can use the blank spaces to write in the name of someone who has already colored in their square and does something especially helpful to keep the community safe, healthy, and happy.
You may continue your BINGO game for as many times and for as long as you wish. Consider doing blackout BINGO and then starting over again with ways students can be community helpers outside of school.
3. Reflect on Service: After a student colors their square on the BINGO card, ask them to draw a picture of themselves as a community helper using one of the following colors to show how it felt to be a community helper (see page 4 of the handout):
- Red = Frustrated / Mad
- Yellow = Shy
- Purple = Brave
- Blue = Calm
- Green = Happy
- Orange = Afraid
After the class gets a BINGO engage in a class discussion using these reflection questions:
- How did it feel to be a community helper?
- How did it feel to “catch” someone being a community helper?
- How did it feel to be recognized for your service?
- Why is it important to be a community helper?
Optional Reflection
Prompt for a class discussion:
Why is it important to have community helpers?
How does it feel to be a community helper at school?
How can you be a community helper outside of school?