Students in Holly Miller’s third grade class at Sand Creek Elementary recently got to experience how a real city or town operates. As part of their academic standards, the class studied the wide of variety roles that a community must fill in order to function as a town/city. Then the student-driven portion of the project began! With additional instruction and resources from media specialist Laura Collier, each class member filled out a job application for a role that interested him or her. Available roles included the mayor, city council member, employee of the public works or parks and recreation departments, a career with the fire or police department, and more!

After a city mayor was elected and other roles assigned by interest, students practiced their research skills in the library, looking for reliable information about their chosen job. Students used that knowledge to build a 3-D representation of the town of “Millerville.” In addition to the content learned, the Millerville project gave students practice in collaboration and team-building, a visual representation of the necessities of a town,  and even included a math lesson on scale! Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Collier both declared this cross-curricular, collaborative unit to be a huge success–the students agreed!