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Far Away Friends
Grades 3-5
Grades 6-8
Reading
Social Studies
Writing

Far Away Friends

Using Book Creator, engage students in a collaborative project to learn about each other’s community.

Activity Partner
Total time estimate:
30-60 minutes
Activity Objectives
  • Students will create a book to share about their community, such as people’s homes, local stores and restaurants, and the natural environment
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  • Through this activity, students will explore other communities and reflect on similarities and differences between how people live
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‍This activity supports the development of the following social-emotional skills: relationship skills, self-awareness, and social awareness.

Discuss

Engage students in a discussion about their community by asking the following questions: 

  • What words would you use to describe our city, town, or region?
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  • When you walk around our community, what do you notice? (e.g., homes, stores, animals, transportation, etc.) 
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  • Imagine we had someone visiting our community. What would we want to show them? What are some beautiful, unique parts of our community, and the people who live here? 
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  • What activities might this visitor enjoy? (e.g., exploring our natural environment, trying our favorite foods, or attending a local festival or sports game) 
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Introduce the project to students: creating a book to share about your community! Share this example to spark their imagination, which was a collaboration between students in the US and Iceland. Similarly, your students will work with their partner class to create a book featuring both communities. 

Create

Coordinate with your partner educator to work on the book together! To create the book, follow these instructions: 

  1. Sign up for a free Book Creator account (if you don’t have one already).
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  2. Navigate to your Teacher Dashboard and add a new library for your class.
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  3. Share the invite code so both classes can join the library.
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  4. Create a blank book and start adding pages. Make it rich with multimedia!
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  5. You can either turn on collaboration so you both work on the same book, or work on separate books and then combine them. Try to mirror each other’s pages – for example, if one class shares about homes in their community, then the other class should add photos of homes in their community as well.  
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Share ideas with students around community features they might include, such as: 

  • Homes 
  • Stores 
  • Restaurants / foods
  • Streets 
  • Natural environment (animals, plants, geographic features, etc.)
  • Pets  
  • Transportation 
  • Parks / playgrounds 
  • Sports
  • Schools
  • Landmarks
Book Creator
Reflect

After both classes have contributed to the book, consider facilitating a live virtual exchange and reading the book aloud together. Then, encourage students to ask questions to learn more about each other! Make sure to send a copy of your book to the Empatico team as well! 

After the activity, engage students in a reflection by asking the following questions: 

  • How are our communities similar to each other? How are they different? 
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  • What is something that you found interesting about our partner class’s community?
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  • How did this activity help you see the world from our partner class’s eyes? (perspective taking)
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