Are you puzzled by some of the problems you see in your community? Discuss the issues and discover how you can be part of the solution with this simple activity!

• 1.

  While all communities across the country is diverse and unique, each can be improved in some way. Every single person can contribute something positive to help his or her town and neighbors.

• 2.

  What can be improved about the community in which you live? Who do you know that is making a difference in your community? What can you do to help? What will happen if no one takes action?

• 3.

  Show that every student in your class is needed to build a better community by making a large class puzzle.

• 4.

  Roll out a large sheet of heavy paper, and carefully cut puzzles pieces for each student in the class.

• 5.

  On your puzzle piece, use Crayola Slick Stix™ to draw what you will do to help your community. Will you volunteer at an animal shelter? Or maybe you can organize a fundraiser to benefit reading programs at the local library? Slick Stix contain pigments that may stain clothing, fabrics and other household surfaces. Wear a smock to protect clothing and cover your work surface with newspaper.

• 6.

  Put the class puzzle together and display for the school to see! What did your classmates pledge to do? How will your community benefit if every person carries out his or her pledge?

Standards

• LA: Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources.
• LA: With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose.
• LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing own clearly.
• LA: Ask and answer questions about information from a speaker, offering appropriate elaboration and detail.
• LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.
• VA: Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.
• VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

Adaptations

• Working in small groups, students to brainstorm volunteer activities they can participate in school wide. Examples might include reading to a younger student, walking a new student to his bus on his first day at the school, etc. Students recreate the community puzzle as a school community puzzle. A written summary of their school puzzle should accompany the artwork.
• At the close of the school year, students review their school puzzle and write comments about each puzzle piece that they created. Which did they address many times? Are there any issues that they did not commit much time to? Could those issues be addressed next year? If so, how?
• Students study a Warhol portrait such as Marilyn and discuss how to create a portrait using Warhol's style.
• What is art? How do we define this term? Have several of Andy Warhol's reproductions on display in the classroom. Students study his form of pop art and debate whether or not is should be considered art. Why or why not? Students prepare a newspaper editorial presenting their positions on this question.