My students are from a wide variety diversity of backgrounds. My students are eager to learn and are very concerned with fairness and justice in the world. They want to know more about history, geography, and what is happening currently in the world. They have not had much social studies experience before they take my class. They find that while they may have found social studies "boring" in the past, that they learn to love history and geography in my class.
My students love to participate hands-on activities whenever possible.
They love to get up and move around the room and mark features of all kinds on pull-down maps. Every student's jumps up to mark countries, states, physical features, explorer and trade routes, battlefields, and other items on the pull-down maps. They also really enjoy other activities that allow them to manipulate physical items and data in order to find information and solve problems.
My Project
My students remember so much more about the countries and features we learn about in class when they can see them on a large map and mark the features right on the map. It also helps some of my more reluctant readers, because the fonts are much larger than a regular map in an atlas or online, and they can therefore read the map more easily.
My students light up with excitement at the opportunity to "play" with maps and physically mark up the maps.
Sometimes, I call out types of features, such as a peninsula, archipelago, mountain range, river delta, etc., and ask students to use markers to mark these features on the map. Every student is lined up and engaged with finding more and more features on the map. Other times, students draw on the maps to practice latitude and longitude and even other times when they present about historic events, such as pioneer or explorer routes, or battles, and mark where those events happened on the map. The great thing about these maps is that I can then erase the markers, and students can do it all over again!
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