You already belong to more communities than you think. Your year group. A club. A parish. A family group chat. An online space where people share the same interest as you. In this lesson you will participate in mapping those connections at three levels: local, national and global. By the end you will have a saved list of six to ten communities you actually belong to, with one sentence each on what connects you. That list opens Strand 2.1 and feeds the community work and collaborative task that follow.

Three levels of community sit under one definition. Read each row carefully before you sort anything.

Part 1: the sort (about 12 minutes). Drag each community card into Local, National or Global. Some cards sit on a line; put each where you would defend it and be ready to say why. Explore mode means nothing is marked wrong while you talk it through.

Part 2: your own list (about 20 minutes). If you do not yet have a Strand 2.1 folder in your Digital Portfolio, create one now and name it Strand 2.1: Community. Open a new document in that folder called Communities I Belong To. List 6–10 communities you actually belong to, mixing local, national and global where you can. For each one write:

• the community name
• the level (local, national or global)
• one sentence on what connects you (interest, activity or place), not a vague claim that you "are part of it"

A connection sentence that only you could have written is the standard. "I play corner-forward for the under-18s every Tuesday and Saturday" beats "I like sport". Online and diaspora communities count when the link is real for you. Save the document before you move to Think About It. This document is Strand 2.1 portfolio evidence: it is the foundation for the positive-influence audit and the community-issue work later in this strand, and it sits in your Digital Portfolio as reusable evidence for community work that feeds Portfolio in Action.

Talk these through with the person beside you, or work through them quietly on your own.

• Does an online community count the same as one you meet face to face? What would have to be true for it to count for you?
• The Irish diaspora is named as a national community even though its members live in other countries. What does that tell you about how "national" works?

Required now: under your list in Communities I Belong To, add one sentence answering: which community on your list would most surprise someone who only knows you from school, and why? Save again before the summary.

Today you participated in the opening of Strand 2.1. You should now be able to:

• define community as people connected by interest, activity or place
• sort communities into local, national and global levels, including online and diaspora examples
• point to your Communities I Belong To document with 6–10 real communities and a connection sentence for each

Next lesson you will audit the positive influence of one community you belong to, with concrete evidence rather than warm summary.