Geography Ideas to use in the Classroom.

Young people need to know about the world in which they live. Here are some activities you may find of value to use with your students.

My students enjoyed doing these short map safaris to solve a secret message:

SECRET MESSAGE:
Find the answer to the following geographic puzzler. Then, place the first letter of the word in the proper space below to solve the geographic message.

A. The world's largest desert is 3.5 million sq. miles in size and is found in Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia , Algeria and other nations of Africa: ____________(5)
B. The world's largest waterfall is found in Venezuela and is 3212 ft. high:____________________ (1)
C. The world's longest mountain range is found in South America. It is about 5000 miles long:______________(4)
D. This is a famous cave in southwestern France where wonderful cave paintings have been found: _____________ (3)
E. The world's highest navigable lake is found in the South American country of Peru. It is about 12,500 ft. above sea level:______________(2)
ANSWER: 1._____________2.______________3._______________4._____________5.__________

Try my geographic secret messages(PART 1). Students find the answers to geographic questions and then use the first letter of the answer to arrive at a secret message. When the questions are answered, the "secret" term(a geography term) will be revealed! There are 5 geographic messages to solve. Grades 5 and up. Great end of year activity! $3.00
1. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Geography-Geographic-Secret-Messages-709102

2. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Geography-Geographic-Secret-Messages-Continuepart-2-709110




Additionally, here are some other activities to use with your students to foster geography which I developed for Scholastic's Instructor Magazine: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/quick-ideas-grades-6-8-0

 Education World has another activity: Where in the World is Mrs. Waffenschmidt? http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/waffenschmidt/waffenschmidt009.shtml

 Education World has also published another of my activities: Geography Safaris A-Z :http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/geography_az/geography_az013.shtml


Gail


Illustration from: http://www.freeclipartnow.com

Self Contained or Departmentalized Classrooms for 5th and 6th Grade?

For those veteran teachers, you know that the old is often "new" again when it comes to teaching!

When I first started teaching back in(yikes...1973), I started in 5th grade. As a self contained classroom of upper elementary students, I taught science, math, language arts, social studies, reading and even a daily penmanship lesson!  The following year, my team "moved up" with our classes and I taught 6th grade. Looping was the term for this a few years back. The team of 5th grader teachers and 6th grade teachers decided we liked the grades we were in and stopped the two year program and I stayed in 6th grade. For seventeen years, I was a self contained classroom teacher. Then, the winds of change took me, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz  and Toto, transplanting my classroom into a new educational program...I was now a middle school teacher.   With a love of social studies and a masters in the teaching of social studies, I became the social studies teacher in a departmentalized format.

Emotionally and physically the 11-12 year olds I have taught have certainly changed greatly since I first entered the classroom back in 1973. Sixth graders once had much in common with the 4-5th graders, bringing dolls or matchbox cars to school. They attended and enjoyed assemblies for  puppet shows, magic shows, bango playing sing-a-longs and  visits from “Laura Ingalls Wilder” presenters. Now,  the age has become an ever increasing unsettling time of life where the students seem to have more in common with 7th graders and we as educators changed the assembly themes as well. Sixth graders attended drug awareness programs with canine sniffing dog demonstrations, character education and abstinence programs. The latter I personal questioned as too “mature” for my students until I heard the sexually explicit questions that they asked of the speaker! 

Teaching 6th graders isn't for the tame at heart! It's a grade that my student teachers often came into with much trepidation(but loved it at the end of the 8 weeks).  Dealing with their changing  emotional  and physical development  AND trying to teach the age group about the Ancient Egyptians or the Ancient Greeks....can be really challenging! Sixth graders aren’t really elementary children and certainly don’t want to be treated as such but they aren’t teens either.  It’s certainly an awkward time as some have growth spans and others don’t.  An emotional time as well with one day two students being best friends and the next, they are upset and crying about the friendship that has ended. It’s a time where this age level is between a child and a teen(hence the moniker “tweens”) and they are seeking out their identity and independence sometimes stumbling along the way.  

For these reasons, I think a middle school configuration has so much more to offer this age level.  In addition to having teachers teaching a subject that they are most skilled and interested in , students participate in so many additional activities and programs to address this age group than if they would in an elementary configuration Students participated in sports,career awareness, home and career classes, computer and journalism classes,peer mediation, homecoming activities(including the dreaded “6th grade float"-I was the class adviser and supervised my 6th graders participation each year), guidance programs such as tobacco, tolerance and drug awareness.  Additionally, without having to have a reading series as was mandated in a 6th grade elementary program,  my team created  a very unique  program we dubbed STARS(Specific topics to advance reading and other skills).  During this 40 minute non graded class, students read and discussed literature, did character education building, computer activities, geography and writing projects, and shared issues of the day.

With budget cuts and smaller numbers of students, I am wondering if schools will be moving back to a modified self-contained class for 5th and 6th graders. What is the format for 5th and 6th grade is like in your school. Are you departmentalized? Is there a move back to being self-contained?Which do you think is best for students in these grades? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Gail

Gail Hennessey

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Gail-Hennessey

Lots of fun/informative resources for end of the activities to use in social studies and language arts.See all my products and write ups on one page:http://pinterest.com/gailhennessey/gails-tpt-store-see-my-resources/

Starting May 14th:Order any of my resources and receive a FREE webquest on Leopards (with extension activities)as a THANK YOU!(just send me an email with your email).Great end of year activity!Grades 4 and up.

I am having a sale at my TpT Store. ALL my products are 20% off for Teacher Appreciation Week from Monday, May 6th- Wednesday May 8th. On May 7th and 8th, enter the code TAD13 for an added 8%! Check out my social studies resources, webquests, biographical plays and more.Grades 4 and up. THANKS for all your support!

Watch Out for Space Junk!

Using news stories in your classroom...

Junk, you see it littering the highways. There's also junk in space, LOTS of it. Scientists estimate that 20,000 man-made objects are orbiting the Earth, much of the junk in low-Earth orbit. Debris includes rocket boosters, old communication and weather satellites and even tools dropped by astronauts  while outside the International Space Station. And, scientists say there are more than 500,000-tens of millions of  itsy bitsy pieces of junk! And, it's not just floating along in space. Scientists say space debris travels at speeds of about 17,5000 miles per hour.All this space junk zipping around in space could be a safety issue to space missions! Scientists are meeting in May to discuss  the topic and what can be done about it. Scientists in Great Britain are developing a giant harpoon which could grab some of the space junk and pull it down toward Earth where it can burn up. Other scientists are suggesting a net which could catch space junk or a gigantic robotic arm that could grab the space junk and pull it back to Earth. Still another idea is using a ground laser that could take aim and  knock space junk off of a path with  space crafts and satellites. 

Extension Activities:

1. Ask students to come up with ideas that might be used to clean up space junk. Draw a picture of their idea and write a paragraph explaining how it would work.

2. Pretend you are a wrench, chip of paint or other space debris. What do you see in space? Tell about a day in your life as you zip through space.

More Information on Space Junk:

http://stm2.edublogs.org/space-junk/

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/orbital/

Gail

Photograph from Space.com

Cicadas to Soon Arrive!

They're coming....After 17 years, cicadas are about to return. From states along the eastern coast, billions  and billions of the insects will soon be making an appearance. The cicada,a relative of the katydids and crickets, have been living underneath the ground and are now ready to make an appearance above ground to chirp loudly,find a mate, lay their eggs and...die. Actually, the cicadas that will be showing up are the children of those that visited back in 1996. They are being called Brood 2. There are 2500 species of cicadas. Some appear yearly in Japan. Others wait 13 years and those in the northeast  wait the 17 years to make their visit.  Black and red in coloring, and about 2 inches in length, the males' chirping can be heard up to 1 mile away by the female of the species! Harmless to humans, their sound can be a bit hard on the ears as it can reach 100 decibels(about that of a lawnmower). The commotion lasts several weeks and usually stops at sunset through April and May. 

Photograph from Lifescience.com

Additional information:

Learn more about the cicada:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/cicada/

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2004/05/prime-time-for-cicadas-2/

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/insects/cicada/printout.shtml

Extension Activities:

Draw a picture and write 4 facts learned about cicadas from this link: http://bugfacts.net/cicada.php 

Listen to the sounds of cicadas: http://www.cicadamania.com/audio/  

Do a word search on cicadas(harder) http://saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/HarderWordSearch.htm

Do a word search on cicadas(easier)

http://saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/MediumWordSearch.htm

Read a short story, The Ant and the Cicada:  http://subhan6.blogspot.com/2003/11/and-cicada.html 

Draw the life cycle of a cicada after watching this 2nd grader's presentation onn the life cycle of the ciada: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLxEUB_cMfs

Pretend you are a cicada. Write a creative writing story telling about a day in your life after you have emerged from the ground after 17 years. What do you see? Hear? Feel? Etc. Include 3 facts learned about cicadas.

Fun facts: 

* Only the male chirps

* Cicadas have the loudest insect in the world

* Interestingly, all of the cicadas returns are years which are  prime numbers.

* A theory suggests the chirping isn't to attract a mate but to "bug" birds and keep them from being eaten.

* Although  some people call them locust(a type of grasshopper), cicada aren't!

* Females can lay 400-600 eggs before they die.

Gail

I've posted many different career surveys(they are all free)...check them out at my website for teachers/young people at this link:http://gailhennessey.com/index.shtml?careers.html   Here is the latest posting...

Peter Kirk, Chairman of the British Tarantula Society

Tarantula Expert!

                                           * Photograph from Peter Kirk

Yikes...a tarantula the size of a dinner plate has been found in the country of Sri Lanka! Measuring up to 8 inches in diameter, the tarantula has been named Poecilotheria rajaei. As with other arachnids, this whopper of a spider, has eight eyes, two fangs and eight legs.About the size of a human face, Poecilotheria rajaei has daffodil-yellow markings on its legs and has a pink ring around its body. Although the bite of the Poecilotheria rajaei is NOT fatal, it's being killed by those who find the rare spider. The tarantula is large enough to feed on mice, small birds and lizards. Although certainly a very large tarantula, it doesn't equal the size of the South American Theraphosa blondi, considered to be the largest known tarantula. Known as the Goliath Birdeater, that tarantula can reach 12 inches in diameter! Read this interview with Peter Kirk who was involved in the discovery of the face sized tarantula!

1. How did you become interested in spiders? Did anything as a student play a role?

When I was about 4 years old we moved to  a town close to Epping Forest in south-east England.My earliest memories were finding stag beetles, toads and newts (similar to salamanders) which I kept for a little while and then released.  At the age of 6, I moved close to another big woodland – the Chilterns.  Again, here there was lots of wildlife to be seen which further stimulated my interest.  My brother was interested in the mammals and birds whereas I was interested in the invertebrates and reptiles; when we went out, we didn’t miss much!

2. Do you have a specific memory that you'd like to share about tracking down the face sized tarantula recently discovered in Sri Lanka? Any cool facts you'd like to share with kids?

Finding your first tarantula in the wild is always the most exciting thing.  It wasn’t the biggest, by any means, but it was definitely the best.  It was in Sri Lanka, but up was way up in the cool highlands.  After a long walk up through the tea plantations we reached the summit of the hills surrounding the town of Nuwara Eliya. After hours of walking through the mountain forest, getting cut on the thorns and bushes, I found an old, dead tree with a hole about 15 feet up. Still adept at tree-climbing, I put on a head-torch (to keep both hands free). I climbed up and wedged myself in place so I could see the silk-covered hole more clearly.  Carefully removing the silk, I switched on my torch(flashlight) and peered into the hole to be greeted with the distinctive black and white banded legs with their beautiful flash of orange/yellow of the beautiful Poecilotheria subfuca. I was so excited I almost fell out of the tree…..

3. Any thoughts for young people who may be interested in spiders, specifically the tarantula?

Join an organization, such as the British Tarantula Society to find out more about tarantulas.  Under no circumstances should they rush out and buy a pet tarantula without carrying out the appropriate degree of research first.  Some species are quite robust and will survive under a number of different condition, but some require very specific conditions without which they will simply die.  Before getting any animal as a pet, especially those considered to be ‘exotic’, you must find out about them BEFORE you get one. Also, I don’t recommend handling tarantulas as it could lead to them getting bitten, getting tarantula hairs in your eyes (which can lead to some fairly serious problems) or you may drop your tarantula which is likely to kill it.

4. Do you have any tarantulas at your home?

The number I have at any particular time can vary depending on what aspect I am looking at and at the moment I have relatively few.  I have had in excess of 300 – and many people I know have more than this! Feeding and maintaining my spiders takes time. At the moment I am looking at describing some new species, so many of the spiders I have at the moment are dead, preserved specimens which are constantly under my microscope comparing and establishing the differences between the different species.

5. What locations in the world have you traveled? Have you faced challenging locations or situations? If, so, could you share a particular memory?

I have travelled mostly in the far east; India, Sri Lanka and Sabah and Sarawak (in Borneo).  I have wonderful memories from all of these places and have seen some incredible wildlife, leopards, king cobras, elephants, crocodiles…..  One time though, in Sri Lanka during their civil war, I was alone at night in a forest that I had been told it was dangerous to be in.  After having startled a troop of monkeys and a herd of deer I had walked for another half an hour before almost stumbling into a military camp.  I quickly turned round and got out of there as quickly as possible.  Once a safe distance away, I started to move quicker when, on the ridge above me I saw a light moving at the same speed as me .  I thought it was an armed soldier so I switched off my head torch and dived behind a tree.  After a couple of minutes of listening and not hearing anything, I peered out from behind the tree to see the light (not moving) still there – it was the moon!  It was rather embarrassing so, on this occasion, I was glad I was on my own!

6. Can you share a couple of cool facts about tarantulas  with kids? Why do you think many people are afraid of spiders?

There are over 850 different species of tarantulas.They can range in size from about inch to over 12 inches in diagonal leg span.  They are all venomous, but none are known to be dangerous to humans and there is no record of a single death from a tarantula bite.  They have eight eyes, eight legs, two fangs and two pedipalps (which are like two small legs which act as ‘feelers’).  Some species, such as the Mexican red-knee, can live for almost 30 years in captivity! I especially study the  ornamental tree spiders of India and Sri Lanka (Poecilotheria) and some of the arboreal (tree-dwelling) spiders of the far east. The Poecilotheria are, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful tarantulas on our planet – the are large, fast and can be defensive (a term I prefer to ’aggressive’) – they have a little bit of character.

Activities:
1. Write a diary pretending to be Peter Kirk, tell about a day searching for a tarantula.
2. Pretend to be the Sri Lanka tarantula which was recently discovered. Tell about a day in your life. What did you see? Feel? Hear? Etc.
3. Draw a picture of a tarantula and write 3 facts learned about tarantulas on your drawing(in complete sentence form)

Learn more about tarantulas:
1. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/tarantulas/
2. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/tarantula-facts-for-kids.html

Please check out my TpT Store:http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Gail-Hennessey  If my materials are something you might find of value, I'd be happy if you'd become a follower!

Gail