Different Communities

Second Grade Social Studies,

by Yolanda Swain September 21, 2015

What's the difference? In this lesson, your students will learn to describe what living in an urban, rural, and a
suburban area is like.

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to describe and compare rural, urban, and suburban communities.

Materials and preparation Key terms

Town and Country by Craig Shuttlewood urban

Chart tablet paper suburban
Markers rural
Photographs or illustrations of rural, urban, and
suburban communities
Index cards
Class set of Compare and Contrast: Rural and
Urban worksheet
"Communities Introduction" video
Class set of Three Types of Communities
worksheet (optional for visuals of three
locations)
Computer and projector

Attachments

Compare and Contrast: Rural and Urban (PDF)

Three Types of Communities (PDF)

Introduction (5 minutes)

Read aloud Town and Country by Craig Shuttlewood. Tell students that in a city you'll find tall buildings
and buses and people who are rushing. Around the cities people live and play and they travel by train to
work every day. At night on a farm, you can see many stars. And across the hills, the lights of passing
cars.
Ask students to look at the illustrations and describe some details in towns and some in the country.
Tell students that today they're going to learn about different communities.

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling (5 minutes)

Explain to your students that urban means a city community, often with tall buildings and homes close
together.
Remind your students that rural means a community with open land and sometimes farms.
Define suburban as a community located near a city, often more family-oriented.
Display a photograph of an urban, rural, and suburban community, and ask your students to identify
which is which.
Discuss the similarities and differences of each community. Potential discussion questions include:

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 "How do the people in this community get around?"
"Do they drive, walk, or take public transportation?"

Guided Practice (5 minutes)

Show the "Communities Introduction" video.

Draw a three-column chart on chart tablet paper labeled "Urban," "Rural," and "Suburban."
Have students help complete the chart by describing the details and ideas they noticed in the video
about each type of community.
Challenge students to compare the details and ideas from the book with the information they learned
from the video.
Record each student's response on the chart.
Then, have students place the photographs or illustrations that were used earlier into the appropriate
column.

Independent working time (10 minutes)

Give each student a copy of the Compare and Contrast: Rural and Urban worksheet.
Read the directions.
Have students look at the pictures of urban and rural life. Direct them to write sentences to describe how
they're similar and how they're different.

Differentiation

Enrichment:

Instruct your students to write a short paragraph about what they could do in each community.

Support:

Have your students draw pictures that reflect an urban, a rural, and a suburban area.
Allow them to describe key ideas and details from each community in partners before writing them down.
Give students the option to use the worksheet Three Types of Communities as an alternative worksheet
to the Compare and Contrast: Rural and Urban worksheet.
Provide sentence stems and key words to help them with their assessment.

Assessment (5 minutes)

Give each student an index card.

Have students write about what type of community their home is in and explain how they know. Ask
them to describe some details and features in their community.

Review and closing (10 minutes)

Divide your students into three groups: people who live in an urban community, a rural community, and a
suburban community.
Have each group take turns telling about the place they live using key details from the chart paper as
support.

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Social

Urban & Rural

Studies
Civics
&
Government

The picture on the left side shows an urban setting. The picture on the right
shows a rural setting. Write two sentences comparing and contrasting
these areas on the lines below.

Urban Rural

Differences

Similarities

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 Name: Date:

Three Types of Communities

Directions: Use the word bank to complete the sentences.

An _________________

community is filled with people,

_________________ , and

different types of transportation.

A _________________

community is a smaller

town near a larger

_________________ .

A _________________
community has open space

and few homes in the

_________________ .

Word Bank
suburban city urban buildings rural country

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