Map Landforms Project: Create an Initial Island

My students love this culminated project for our map unit. After a study of maps and common landforms I assign students the task of creating an island out of the initial letter of their first name. Then, they are challenged to add a certain number of characteristics like landforms, bodies of water, animal species, human made features (bridges, houses, roads) and more. In addition they need to create an accurate map key and name their island. Finally, they complete the writing task where they are to write a persuasive commercial to entice others to vacation on their unique island. It is a BIG hit and is a great way to assess students' understanding of maps and geography. I hope your class will enjoy it as much as mine do. You can find it in my TPT store. 

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Classroom Resources for Martin Luther King

My class is focusing on biographies right now and I've compiled resources over the years on my blog for Martin Luther King. I hope you find something useful to use in your own classroom.

My newest find is an online MLK reader.

The following links are from my past blog posts

MLK Birthplace Virtual Tour

MLK Timeline and Famous Quotes

The King and His Dream Video and Song

National Geographic Kids Video on MLK

Stay in touch

~Denise

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September 11th Read Aloud

I recently added the book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein to my classroom collection.

It tells the true story of the Frenchman, Philippe Petit's, tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.  The theme of perseverance is a great point of discussion after reading this book. As I was preparing my lesson, I located this wonderful craftivity over at The Best Childrens' Books website.

Students work on goal setting, as Philippe Petit did with his tightrope feat.

Here's my rendition of the craftivity:

Other just as useful resources for The Man Who Walked Between the Towers can be found over at Scholastic. Resources include lessons on analyzing the character traits of Philippe Petit.

Will you be doing lessons to honor September 11th? I'd love you to share your ideas.

~Denise

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Teaching the Dream of MLK

I posted about the resources I've used to teach about Martin Luther King on the ATUE blog the other day.  See it HERE

And today I just found this tribute song to add to my lessons.

    

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Teaching about Immigration, Ellis Island and Today's Pilgrims

My class just finished an in depth author study of Patricia Polacco.

We learned how her family immigrated to the U.S. from Russia.

I read the book Coming to America to teach more about the immigration process.

Then we explored Scholastic's site on immigrants which includes video clips of immigrant children today as well as background on Ellis Island.

Finally, we connected Patricia Polacco's family history of being Russian immigrants to the novel Molly's Pilgrim. A video is available for the story too that we compared the book to.

View a video clip

To wrap up our pilgrim and immigration focus students made their own Molly's Pilgrim doll.

 

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Learning from History Lincoln and Washington

I'm using this virtual tour of the Lincoln Memorial to bring history to life.

For Washington this interactive timeline is a treasure.

And combine both presidents in this catchy song

On another note, I shared a neat resource for a thesaurus study over at All Things Upper Grade.

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MLK Virtual Tour

Here are some more Martin Luther King finds for the classroom.

A Virtual Tour of MLK Childhood home and Ebenezer Baptist Church

Online coloring portrait

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V is for Veterans Day

It's time to honor our veterans.  Here's my Veterans Day unit that includes letter writing, a poster, acrostic poem, a holiday overview, and ABC order dog tag badges.

You can get it in my store

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Elections and Voting Activities

I just made an I Have Who Has Election theme set game.

It’s a fun Around the World looping type game. Each card states a question related to voting and elections. Students each hold one or more cards and need to listen and respond with their card if it is the correct answer. Play continues in sequence until all cards have been read.

Grab it at my store

And if you missed my last post there's this: Election TV Ad writing

 Aso, here's a 5 page election writing prompt pack!

Cute kid quote:

One of my students wrote in response to character traits of a president:

"Well I think the president would need a squeaky clean record."

 

You can also grab my Election Pack Bundle at a discount.

 

 

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Election Ads: Persuasive writing

Election time fun is here!

 My students created TV ads for a candidate of their choice and then wrote a persuasive speech to go with it. We talked about catchy slogan writing and selling your candidate. This was one project every student wanted to get right to work on. Some picked to write about an animal or cartoon character and others chose to write about themselves or a classmate as a candidate. So fun!

You can get this unit {HERE}

This is part of my Election Bundle you can grab at a discount too!

 

The lead in to this lesson was the wonderful book Vote by Eileen Christelow.

Her website has lots of election links too!

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California Regions

This week my class wrapped up our learning of the four main regions of California by making these bean maps.  My grade level does these every year. We used rice, pinto/kidney beans, split peas, and popcorn kernels to represent the coast, mountain, central valley and desert areas.

 

~Enjoy

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Compass Rose Fun - Cardinal and Intermediate Directions

My absolute favorite part of teaching geography is when my students create their own compass rose
Prior to sending this project home we've spent time in class learning about both cardinal and intermediate directions. I even do a PE Compass Rose Relay game. I set up directional signs in a circle formation, throw colored circles around and relay teams race to follow cue cards that says various things like:

Skip and pick up a green circle. Put it in the Northwest hoop.

Crab crawl and pick up a yellow circle. Put it in the South hoop.

High knee run and pick up a blue circle. Put it in the East hoop.

Once students have a solid foundation for their directions my grade level sends home this compass rose project

Here are some samples:

~Enjoy

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