Social Studies

Mapping Out Weeks 1-3

Wednesday, August 14 - 

Thursday, August 15 - 

Friday, August 16 - Map Elements
Today, students will do an activity to help them discover the 5 elements of a map:  title, map key, compass rose, scale, and grid.  I will place students in cooperative groups and provide each group with a world map, state map, parish map, city map, and a Map Elements word grid. Students will use the maps to complete the word grid. As a group, students will fill in the word grid by placing a “+” in the space corresponding to the element that is present on each particular map.  If the element is not present on the map, a “—” should be put in the space. 
 When each group has had time to explore maps and record elements from each set, I will gather students and compile a master list titled Elements of Maps on chart paper. Students will share elements that are common to all types of maps.  Provide students with an opportunity to add other elements they found on their maps. Have students record the master list in their social studies journals/compositions to be referred to later.  Each day next week, a day will be devoted to each map element.

I will then show the students a map of the world and a globe. Discuss the purpose of maps and globes. Put students into small groups and have them compare a map to a globe using a Venn diagram graphic organizer.  All of this information will be then be transferred to individual 3-Tab foldables (below) and pasted in their interactive notebooks.

Students will respond to the following statements or questions in their social studies journals/compositions:

• Choose the top five map elements that you feel are most important to successfully reading a map. With 1 being the most important and 5 being the least, prioritize them by putting a numeral beside each element. Justify or defend your choices. In other words, why did you prioritize them the way that you did?
• Describe one map element that you just learned about today.
• What are two important ways a parish map is different from a world map?
• Which map elements can be found on a globe?

Monday, August 19 - 
Today, we will focus on the compass rose.  We will construct a compass rose and discuss the cardinal directions and intermediate directions.
To check for understanding, students will practice the cardinal direction with a fun direction-following activity known as the Royal Castle Floorplan.

Tuesday, August 20 - 

Wednesday, August 21 - 

Thursday, August 22 - 

Friday, August 23 - 

___________________________________________________________

Monday, August 26 - Geography project - "Be a Mapmaker"
I will assign a geography project titled "Be a Mapmaker"to close out the map skills unit. The students will be making a map of their neighborhood and their route to school. Included in their map should be the following elements: 

• Their house 
• School 
• At least five other important landmarks, marked with invented symbols (such as 
• restaurants, parks, churches, banks, friends’ homes, etc.) 
• Map key to explain symbols 
• Map scale 
• Compass rose with all directions listed 
• Map coordinates (these can either be latitude and longitude lines or number and 
• letter coordinates) 

The map should be presented on a half-sheet of poster board. It should be detailed and 
neat with lots of color! There should not be any errors in spelling.  This is a project that will be completed at home and the students will have one week to complete it.The directions and rubric can be viewed below. 

Tuesday, August 27 - 

Wednesday, August 28 - 

Thursday, August 29 - 

Friday, August 30 - 

___________________________________________________________
Today, we reviewed the locations of states by playing “State Bingo”. To play, the students will divide a piece of white paper into nine sections. In each section they will write the name of one of the states from the regions being studied. I will put a copy of the United States (no state names) under the document camera.  I will then place a dot in a state. If students have that state listed, they will mark their cards. Play will continue until someone calls “Bingo.” A more difficult version may be played by changing the transparency to show outlines of states, allowing students to identify the state by the outline only and not its location in the context of other states.

Today, in this activity, I will connect the concept of regions to a grocery store that is familiar to the students.  I will have available various items from a grocery store (dairy products, canned vegetables, fruits, canned tuna, boxed foods, etc.).

I will introduce the lesson using the SQPL (Student Questions for Purposeful Learning) strategy.  I will propose the following statement to the students that will cause them to wonder, challenge, and question the concept of regions:  The regions of the United States can be compared to the layout of a grocery store.  I will write it on the board or on a piece of chart paper as it is presented.  Next, I will ask the students to turn to a partner and think of one good question they have about this statement.  When all student pairs have decided on their questions, I will ask someone from each team to share their questions with the whole class. As students respond, I will write their questions on the chart paper or board.  As similar questions are asked by more than one pair, I will star or highlight them in some way, indicating that it is an important question.  When students finish adding questions, I will contribute my own questions to the list.  Throughout the activity, I will stop periodically and have students discuss with their partners which questions could be answered, then ask for volunteers to share.  I will then mark questions that are answered.

I will Explain to the students that the term region is another way to say area.  In the United States there are different regions or areas because locations often share common characteristics. Countries, states, and cities can be grouped together to form a region because they may have the same landscape, climate, economic factors, culture, or vegetation.

I will prepare the students for learning by explaining that the classroom is going to be converted into a “grocery store.”  Students are going to “stock” the “grocery store” with products by categorizing items into regions.

I will ask the students: What are the different sections of a grocery store?  I will then list their responses in a chart similar to the one below. (Charts will vary depending on students’responses.) Once the students have generated a list of sections/regions within a grocery store, I will designate sections of the classroom that correspond to “regions” of a grocery store. Give each region a name that corresponds to one of the identified United States Regions.  For example, the frozen food section can be called the Northeast region, the dairy section can be the Southern region, canned vegetables can be the Midwest, etc. I will proceed to hold up the items one at a time and have the students decide which region it should belong to.  Then, I will place the item in the correct region of the classroom and list the item in the chart.

Areas/Regions of a Grocery Store
Dairy	Canned vegetables	Frozen food	Produce	Meat

 

After categorizing all of the grocery items, students will then analyze why they placed items into the regions that they did. I will facilitate by asking the following questions:

• Which region has the most products?
• Which region has the fewest products?
• Could some items be classified into two types of regions? For example, bagged spinach could be in the frozen food region and the produce region.

I will relate the concept of grocery store regions to regions of the United States.  I will remind students that countries, states, and cities can be grouped together to form a region because they may have the same landscape, climate, economic factors, culture, or the same vegetation.  I will then explain to students that locations can be grouped by their physical characteristics or their human characteristics.  I will define physical characteristics for students as natural characteristics of a region including climate, landforms, soil, vegetation, and animal life and explain that human characteristics include languages, religions, political systems, economic systems, settlement patterns and transportation.  Students will record these definitions in their journals/compositions.

Students will then classify terms as either physical characteristics or human characteristics of a region in their journals/compositions.  Students will make two columns in their journal:  one labeled “Physical Characteristics,” the other labeled “Human Characteristics.” I will present students with the following terms to classify:  language, mountain, culture, precipitation, river, holiday, food, lake, music, seasons, art, hill, weather, plateau, plain, tradition, natural resource, religion, accent, forest, festivals, deserts, temperature.  

At the conclusion of the activity, I will refer back to the SQPL list of questions and tell students that throughout the study of regions, they will refer back to the list often to answer any questions that were not covered by this activity.  

Students' understanding will be assessed using a Physical and Human Characteristics Quiz.