Geography Lesson Plan?

I am a college student and for a class I have to write a five day lesson plan. I am not very familiar with lesson plans. It is for a geography class, and I have decided to make my lesson plan about the state in which I live, Minnesota. The lesson plan will be for elementary age students. I have decided to use the last two days of the lesson plan for a map/art project where they will make a topographic map of the state. What topics would be important to teach the kids in the first three days? How would you go about the setup of the lesson?

What grade(s) would the lesson focus on? You may want to look up the educational standards for Minnesota as a start.

I’ve taught my 3rd grade class how to interpret maps, learn about communities, then eventually making their own map and building a model community out of that. (That’s Quadrant D for those of you into the relationship/relevance stuff.)

Start by asking “What is a community?” Lead the discussion that a community is a group of people working together for a common goal. Do this by asking “What do we need in a community?” Homes to live in, stores to shop at, banks, parks for recreation, gas stations, restaurants, etc. Let the students brainstorm the places their parents goes to for errands and business. What are places for the children? Schools, library, parks, perhaps video game store. Now you’ve got your community going.

Students need to learn the map. It is abstract so you’d need plenty of examples. This book is a good start “Me on the Map” by Joan Sweeney.

Teach the parts of a map (TODAL)
T=Title
O=Orientation (compass rose)
D=Date (that the map was made/revised)
A=Author (for point of view purposes)
L=Legend (or Key)

If you have internet, share Google Earth to compare and contrast a map with a real image.

As a final assessment, allow the students to build their own community. They’d work in groups of 4-5 to make a map per group. Start with that list of places that were part of the community. Create a map of the fictious community on a large white construction paper. I used different size post-its to represent houses or businesses to keep scale. Those 1″ x 1 1/2″ post-its are homes. Slightly bigger may be restaurants or stores. Then those 6″ ones might be Wal-Mart for example. Use meter sticks to trace out streets. The community doesn’t need to have everything on the list, mainly places to work and live. The proportion of homes and businesses should roughly be equal. Don’t forget TODAL on the maps!

The fun begins. The class as a whole will now build a 3-D model of their community. Have them vote on the best map. Use that as the basis for the model. Don’t stress to match it exactly to the map. Just allow the students to have fun building the model.

Use those 1/2 pint milk cartons the students drink out of for lunch. Those would be the homes or small businesses. Bigger buildings might be 2-3 cartons put together. Using construction paper, and a bunch of students imagination, build your community! Remember the streets! Cut strips of black construction paper about 3″ wide. Hot wheel cars are the perfect size for this community. Teach scale. People can’t be as tall as houses and cars can’t be THAT big.

Assign one place per student. So in a class of 26, there would be roughly 13 homes and 13 businesses (which includes a school, library, police station, etc.) Get a large flattened card board to build everything on. Good luck!

ART IDEAS- learn modern abstract art lessons

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