Revamping Regions

As I {previously shared}, I'm in charge of social studies long range plans.

I thought I'd just be able to reuse what I made last year, but after I looked at it again with fresh eyes, I decided that I needed to just start over. 

I wanted to focus more on the landforms of each state so students could see how regions were geographically similar.  I wanted to include vocabulary that they'd hear in the FOSS Landforms Kit (which is being taught in humanities).  I wanted to be more consistent with each state including the same information (images of state flag, state quarter, state seal) and the same basic layout.

This, unfortunately, is a massive undertaking but all the fifth grade classes are not only using it, but enjoying it as well. 

Last night, many, many hours after my contract time ended, I finished the introduction and Intermountain region powerpoint.  Coming in at 119 slides, it took quite a while to upload to Dropbox and TpT.  I designed it to be a ten day unit, with the first being an overview of what defines a region and how they're created.  The next eight days focus on the eight states in the Intermountain region, with one day at the end for a test.  I zoomed in on Yellowstone National Park, so that could be a day within itself.   

You can snag it {here}.

I designed the lessons to be about 15-20 minutes per day, since that's all we seem able to squeeze into our schedules.

This weekend I'll jump into the West Region with an additional topics on volcanoes, the Northern Lights, and tectonic plates.  From there, I think the Great Plains and the Midwest will be the next two regions, followed by the South, New England, and Mid Atlantic.  After all the states are covered, we'll be working on Native American Indians, Exploration, Plymouth, Colonial Times, the American Revolution, and the foundation of our government.  The year will end with a civics and government unit.

Hopefully this year (lucky #7) will feel like the last year that I have to keep reinventing the wheel and working so hard to create curriculum for my students.  There will always be tweaks and trying new things, but I feel like a first year teacher all over again.  It's a little rough this year.  But at least it's Friday!

SKYPin' it up

One of the many social studies standards for our fifth graders is learning about the three branches of government.  While this has been one of my favorite teaching resources from Lakeshore, I have added to this kit over the years:

We read about the three branches, made a foldable, and did a 3D tour of Washington DC using Google Earth.  My partner teacher, Mrs. H, had a fantastic idea of contacting her cousin, Mrs. W who works for one of our nation's governors.

So, without telling our students, we enlisted the help of our school's digital coach to set up a Skype call with her.  It was a fairly easy process once we found all the proper cords and did a test run with the iPads.

We casually mentioned the upcoming Skype call to our students a few days before it happened.  Hey, we're calling Washington DC to chat about our nation's government.  No big deal, just a typical day in the fifth grade.

They brainstormed questions which ranged from incredibly thoughtful (Which branch of government is your favorite?) to a tad silly (Have you met the first dog? Mind you, the dog. Not the President or First Family, they were only concerned about the First Pets.)  Mrs. W was incredibly patient with them and answered all their questions.  They loved it!

Huge shout out to my partner teacher Mrs. H and her wonderful cousin for letting our fifth graders Skype it up and enhance their learning.

Kid vention

Today we went on our field trip to Kid Vention in Henderson:

On the way there, I read aloud The Lightning Thief on the bus.  Our sweet old bus driver was a little bit confused when I asked for the microphone to host a read-aloud, but he willingly obliged.  To be fair, I wasn't going to take no for an answer, so his compliance was appreciated :)

As a side note, the read aloud did not go as well as I expected.  I sat on my knees, facing the back of the bus and between the construction zones and swerving, got a little car (bus?) sick from reading.  Plus, some stinkers in the back were being disrespectful.

At least we tried to cram in more reading :)

We got to the ampitheater:

We saw four debates today:

And my students got really, really into it:

Hurray for democracy and voting!