Lesson Overview:

In this lesson, students use what they have learned about atlases, geography, and travel writing to create an imaginary holiday itinerary.  Using places nominated by their classmates, they will build some crazy and exciting holiday plans!  This is the final lesson in the unit and should be a celebration of learning while assessing the students’ abilities to use an atlas, recognize features of an area, and promote those features to a reader or audience.

Lesson Plan:

Suggested Grades:

4 and above

Objective:

Working independently and using what they have learned in this unit about geography, students will plan a journey that takes them from a beginning point to three different destinations and back home again.  (AASL 2.3.1, “Connect learning to the real world.”)

Suggested Time:

50-55 minutes

Success Criteria:

Using destination suggestions from their classmates, students will work independently to create an imaginary holiday itinerary, including recommended sites to visit.

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction:

Remind the students that in this unit they have learned to use an atlas, have looked at some of the most stunning sites on the planet (Beautiful World Game), have created an accordion travel book (“Panorama Pops”), and have written a brochure to promote the school.  Explain that today, they will use all their skills – atlas skills, writing, and destination promotion – to tie the unit together.  Today, they will plan an imaginary holiday!

2. Main:

To begin, each student needs three pieces of scrap paper and a pencil.  Ask them to use an atlas, if needed, and to write the following on each of the pieces of paper:

Scrap Paper #1:  Name of their country’s capital city.  (Example: Moscow, Russia)

Scrap Paper #2:  Name of another national capital city on the same continent.  (Example: Lisbon, Portugal – Russia and Portugal are on the same continent.)

Scrap Paper #3:  Name of a capital city on a different continent.  (Ex:  Suva, Fiji, which is in the continent of Australia/Oceania.)

Have each student fold all slips of paper in half and deposit them in the jar/hat/basket.  Toss the papers well.

Pass out the student assignment sheets (see attached).  After the students write their names and the date, have them write the city in which your school is located as the starting point for their imaginary journeys.  My students would write, “Dubai, United Arab Emirates.”  Make sure that they have a city and country, or, where appropriate, city, state, and country.

Next, have each child draw one slip of paper out of the hat.  They should write the name of that place under “Destination #1, Place.”  After everyone has drawn one place, have them draw their second and third destinations and write those on their assignment as well.  Their itineraries are now set.

To complete the assignment, the student needs to write a few words about the location.  For example, if the student draws “Stockholm, Sweden”, they could write, “the capital city of Sweden, a country in northern Europe”.  Another possible response could be, “A country in northern Europe bordering Norway, Finland, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea”.  Make sure that they mention the continent, region, or proximity of neighboring countries or bodies of water.  Basically, they need to use the atlas to provide a geographic description.

Under “Sites to Visit”, ask the student to list two places visitors might be drawn to.  They should get this information by talking to their classmates, using the atlas, using World Book’s Compare Places tool (or whatever digital resources your school subscribes to).  They could also use country books or travel books.  For example, if a student is working on Ireland, he could mention the Cliffs of Moher or Blarney Castle.  This is not a big research effort – the kids only need to find two attractions or sites for each of the locations.

For “Notes”, ask the students to write a few words about the way they would recommend traveling from site to site.  If the sites are very far apart, aircraft might be necessary.  However, a few of them might have different ideas.  Would they sail, hike, take a train or a hot air balloon?  How about a submarine?  How many ways can they think of to get from destination to destination?

3. Conclusion:

Ask the children if any of them would like to share their imaginary holiday journeys.  They will likely be excited to tell about where they are headed and what they plan to see.  Collect the work and submit it to the teacher for the student’s portfolio.

Resources:

1. Small slips of scrap paper for nominating three destinations.
2. Hat, jar, or basket to collect all the nominations.  (Each student will contribute three destination ideas.)
3. Student Assignment Sheet (see attached.)
4. Pencils, colored pencils.

Notes:

This lesson is designed to be a summative experience for the unit.  If you wish, film the students presenting or telling about their travel itineraries.  This would make a great addition to a digital portfolio.  If you do not have the option of a digital portfolio, place the student assignment from today’s lesson in a paper portfolio of work.

The lesson can easily be adapted for destinations within one country or destinations within one state or region.  I’ve purposely omitted the words “Country” or “State” so that you can simply tailor the lesson to the geography that works best for your students.

Recommended books for this lesson: 

A collection of atlases, preferably National Geographic Kids’ Atlas.

Key Terms:

Travel Journalism, Holidays, Vacations, Sight Seeing, Travel, Geography

 

Student Handout, A Holiday Getaway

Lesson Overview:

In this lesson, we build on last week’s idea of creating a piece of work that highlights the students’ understanding of new places.  However, instead of creating an artistic piece of work, students will combine their efforts to create a written piece.  Using travel guide books and local travel brochures as samples, students will write a travel guide to their school convincing others to come, visit, and perhaps even stay!  Students will be journalists for a day as their ideas about their own learning spaces coalesce into publication-worthy travel brochures.

Lesson Plan:

Suggested Grades:

4 and above

Objective:

Working in small groups, students will create a travel brochure highlighting the features, services, and people of their school.  (AASL 2.16: “Use the writing process, media and visual literacy, and technology skills to create products that express new understandings.”)

Suggested Time:

50-55 minutes

Success Criteria:

Students will work in small groups to create a travel brochure for their school.  Highlighting areas, services, people, and programs that they feel are noteworthy, students will use their persuasive writing skills to highlight the school’s most attractive features.

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction:

Remind the students that in the last lesson they looked briefly at travel guide books.  As a review, travel guide books usually draw the reader’s attention to:

• Sights and attractions
• Famous architecture including bridges, fountains, skyscrapers, churches, or monuments
• Shopping venues
• Restaurants
• Hotels
• Parks
• Entertainment or leisure venues

Today, explain to the students that they won’t be creating a piece of art for a book, but a piece of writing, just like those who write travel books.  Today, the students become travel journalists!

However, schools don’t have restaurants, and schools don’t have hotels!  Ask the students what a travel brochure for a school might include.  Possible responses:

• Sports facilities
• Musical instruments, concert hall, rehearsal rooms
• Playgrounds!! (Everyone’s favorite)
• Murals and distinctive artwork
• Gardens or school greenhouse
• Nurse or counselor offices
• Secretary and principal offices
• Cafeteria or kitchens
• Favorite teachers or staff
• Technology center and libraries

Scribe this list where children can see it.

2. Main:

Ask each student to choose ONE area of the school from the list about which to write.  It is important that not everyone write on the same topic!  Organize the activity so that no more than three children write on the same section of the school.  This way, you can later assemble their work into a brochure promoting the school, and there will be enough variety to keep it interesting.

If the students do not know how to compose a short paragraph, teach them the structure of a paragraph so that they can write one that has:

1. An introductory sentence.  (Example:  GWA has an awesome library!)
2. At least three distinct pieces of evidence to support the claim in the introduction.  (Example: In the library, you can choose from hundreds of comics.  There are art books for those who want to learn to draw and cookbooks for kids who like to make dinner at home.  Also, you can do your own book scanning at the student check-out station!)
3. A conclusion.  (Example: The library is one of the best parts of our school. Stop by soon!)

Completed Sample Paragraph:

GWA has an awesome library!  In the library, you can choose from hundreds of comics.  There are art books for those who want to learn to draw and cookbooks for kids who like to make dinner at home.  Also, you can do your own book scanning at the student check-out station!  The library is one of the best parts of our school.  Stop by soon!

Once the children have completed their paragraphs, if there is time, give them equipment and send them off to take pictures of the people or places they have just written about.  This way, when the work is published, it can be published with photos.

3. Conclusion:

Bring the students back together.  Have a few of them share what they have written with the class.  Explain that, before the next lesson, you will group their work into collections to make school-themed travel brochures.

Resources:

1. A collection of travel guide books or country books, whichever you can easily pull from your collection.
2. A collection of travel brochures, preferably local, which will show the students that it is easy to highlight places without having to write an entire book. The local tourist information office or visitor’s center should be able to supply you with these, or you might be able to download them from the web.  Samples might include:

• Theme Parks
• County, State, or National Parks
• Public Libraries
• Farmer’s Markets
• Walking Tours, Culinary Tours, Trolley Tours
• Landmarks, Historical Sites
• Special Events Such as Winter Wonderland or Autumn Corn Maze

3. Blank paper, lined paper.
4. Pencils, pens. (No erasers!!!)

Notes:

I have designed this lesson around the idea of writing a travel brochure for your school.  However, you could adapt it for younger students to write about their classroom.  A classroom’s brochure content might feature the reading corner or classroom library, hand washing station, cubbies, art area, dress-up or play areas, working spaces including tables and chairs, teacher and assistant spaces, media and technology.  The concept works equally well for a classroom as it does for a school.

The project could also be adapted for a group of children that wanted to focus just on the sports program and facilities, or just on the art program and facilities.  Encourage the children to follow their interests as long as there is enough varied content to support the travel brochure idea.

Because you typically only have one period, do not look for a finished product.  Expect the kids to complete a draft which, if you or the teacher choose, could be refined into a finished product.  The emphasis here should be on the content, recording ideas that would promote the school to someone who knows nothing about it.  Content, not product!  You’ll need to collaborate with the classroom teacher on this.  Quite often, I find that teachers want to continue with the writing projects I start.  Sometimes they design their own writing tasks to get the children to reflect on or explain the work we do.  So, be sure to talk to your teachers to make sure that the writing component of this project is well integrated.

Finally, if your kids have done a lot of writing lately, this lesson could also be adapted to be a travel documentary (video) instead of a travel brochure.  Using technology, especially Adobe Spark, children could photograph their favorite areas of the school and then record a simple script to go with the photos.

In my experience, children can talk forever, but when asked to write, many of them grind to a halt.  Encourage them to “talk on paper” (aka write).  For students with learning differences, use a recording device so that their ideas can be captured through speech.  But, this is the only writing lesson in the unit, so I would try to stick with writing if possible.

Recommended books for this lesson: 

A collection of travel guides from your library collection or public library. They are usually available in these series:  Let’s Go, Lonely Planet, Insight Guides, Rough Guides, DK Eyewitness Travel, DK Top 10, Marco Polo, Rick Steves, and Fodor’s.  (Use the same ones you used in the last lesson.)

Key Terms:

Travel Journalism, Persuasive Writing, Sight Seeing, Brochures

 

Lesson Overview:

In this lesson, we move away from atlases and places on the map and focus on creating projects that promote an understanding of special locations.  Using travel guides, country books, and city “Panorama Pops”, students work together to create an accordion-style book that highlights features of a particular region.  This is a creative lesson and will be followed by a travel writing lesson next week.  In the first two lessons of this unit, the children saw images from all around the world.  Now it is time to create something beautiful to showcase their new understandings.

Lesson Plan:

Suggested Grades:

4 and above

Objective:

Working in small groups, students will create an accordion-style book to highlight their understanding of special places in a country or city.  (AASL 2.16:  “Use the writing process, media and visual literacy, and technology skills to create products that express new understandings.”)

Suggested Time:

50-55 minutes

Success Criteria:

Students will work in small groups to create accordion-style books highlighting their understanding of a country or city.

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction:

Remind the students that in the last two lessons they reviewed atlas skills and then practiced finding landmarks in a world atlas.  Today, explain that they will get to use their creative energy to showcase some of the amazing places they have learned about.

Show the collected travel guides and Ms. McMenemy’s “Panorama Pops” books.  Ask what it is about these books that might make you want to visit those places.  Specifically, ask students what the travel guides and “Panorama Pops” books highlight.   Some ideas might include:

• Sights and attractions
• Famous architecture including bridges, fountains, skyscrapers, churches, or monuments
• Shopping venues
• Restaurants
• Hotels
• Parks
• Entertainment or leisure venues

2. Main:

Explain that today the students will be working in small groups to create an accordion-style book like Ms. McMenemy’s “Panorama Pops” books.  They will use the blank sheets of paper and collage technique.  Once completed, the individual pieces will be assembled into accordion-style books using duct tape. (See attached photos of completed project.)

Show the children the lesson outline.  Use a timer or hourglass to make sure that you stay on target and can finish in one period.

• With your group, using the available information resources, choose a country or city to highlight (two minutes).  Example: Dubai, UAE.
• With your group, decide which student will represent which item/building/feature. Burj Khalifa, the beaches, Burj al Arab, Miracle Gardens, Legoland, etc. (3 minutes)
• Use the white paper, collage materials, and markers to create one piece that highlights that particular feature.  Example:  One child creates a collage image to represent Dubai’s beaches.  (20 minutes)
• Glue the collage pieces to the cardboard pieces.  (3 minutes)
• Using duct tape, tape the cardboard pieces together “accordion style.” (7 minutes)

3. Conclusion:

There won’t be much time left over, but encourage the children to take a look at the other group’s projects.  Take photographs as the children work and certainly take photos of the finished products before they leave the library!  Share on the class Weebly or in a library display.

Resources:

1. A couple of Sarah McMenemy’s “Panorama Pops” City Guides. Either New York, Paris, Venice, Washington D.C., Berlin, or London.  These are accordion-style, pop-out books that will give the children an idea of what is possible.
2. A collection of travel guide books or country books, whichever you can easily pull from your collection.
3. Duct tape or packing tape.
4. Pieces of thin cardboard a bit larger than the size of paper you’d like your students to use.  I typically use the sides of copy paper boxes.
5. Blank paper
6. Colored paper scraps for collage.
7. Markers, crayons, pencils
8. Rulers
9. Miscellaneous crafting objects like buttons, sequins, cotton balls, sandpaper scraps, tissue paper, pipe cleaners, Q-tips, feathers, etc., for use in the collage pieces.

Notes:

At the International School of Stuttgart, we were privileged to host Ms. Sarah McMenemy as our visiting author one year for our Book Week celebrations.  Sarah was a lovely guest and conducted art workshops all week long with our students.  Using torn paper, markers, and quite a bit of imagination, Sarah guided our students through the creation of breathtaking pieces.  I highly recommend her work, not only the “Panorama Pops” series, but also each of the picture books she has illustrated.  They are exquisitely done and tie to many of the most popular PYP units.  If you’d like to visit Sarah’s web site, you can do that here:  http://www.sarahmcmenemy.com/.  Sarah made the accordion-style books with our Grade 5 classes, and it was that week with her that inspired me to incorporate the project into other units of inquiry.  Thank you, Sarah, and thank you to Mr. Whitaker, aka Dangerboy, and the entire ISS Grade 5 team!

If you don’t think that your kids will cooperate well, if you are pressed for time, or if you would simply rather they work independently, ask the kids to work independently and create a piece to represent one landmark or natural feature from their unit of study – perhaps one landmark from the city or country where your school is located.  Then, once everyone has created one piece, you can put them all together to make a class book.  Either way will work.  The important thing is to let the kids express their understanding by creating a piece that is used in a book reminiscent of Ms. McMenemy’s pop-up city books.

Recommended books for this lesson: 

1. Any of Sarah McMenemy’s “Panorama Pops” books, including Berlin, New York, Paris, Venice, Washington D.C., or London.
2. A collection of travel guides from your library collection or public library. They are usually available in these series:  Let’s Go, Lonely Planet, Insight Guides, Rough Guides, DK Eyewitness Travel, DK Top 10, Marco Polo, Rick Steves, and Fodor’s.

Key Terms:

Landmarks, Geography, Maps, Pop-Ups, Architecture, Sight-Seeing

My Favorite Place

Our Favorite Places

Completed Accordion Book

Lesson Overview:

This lesson is actually an activity that builds on last week’s work with atlases.  It is designed to give students a sense of wonder about the incredible diversity and beauty found on Earth.  You’ll need one atlas for every two students and one copy of Lonely Planet’s Beautiful World.  Take the children on a round-the-world adventure using their new atlas skills!

Lesson Plan:

Suggested Grades:

4 and above

Objective:

To use atlases to locate famous geographical landmarks.  (AASL 4.1.4, “Seek information for personal learning in a variety of formats and genres.”)

Suggested Time:

40-45 minutes

Success Criteria:

Students will participate in the “It’s a Beautiful World Game.”

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction:

Remind the children that last week they learned how to use the National Geographic Kids World Atlas.  Ask what they remember from that lesson.  Possible answers might include:  Color coding, organized by continents, lots of pictures, flags and games at the back.  Explain that today they’ll use the atlases to find geographic landmarks.  Most are natural, but a few may be manmade.

Show your library’s copy of Lonely Planet’s Beautiful World.   The kids will probably be excited over the size of the book and the quality of the illustrations.  Tell them that they’ll have a chance to look more carefully at the book at the end of the lesson.

2. Main:

Play the “It’s a Beautiful World” game by showing the illustrations on the page numbers listed below.  For each illustration, have the children try to figure out where the place is and then find that place in their atlases.  Once every team has made a guess, reveal the answer.  If you choose to, give the children instructions on self-scoring.

Places in Europe:

Place Number	Page Number	Place
1	18	Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia
2	26	Waterfall at Myrdalsjokull Glacier, Iceland
3	38	Steller’s sea eagles, Kamchatka, Russia
4	46	Lavender fields, France
5	47	Lake District, Cumbria, England
6	93	Manarola town in Cinque Terre, Liguria, Italy
7	132	Black Forest, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
8	135	Aurora borealis, Kiurna, Sweden
9	180	Triglav National Park, Slovenia
10	186-187	Scotland
11	214	Millau viaduct, Midi-Pyrenees, France

Places Outside Europe:

Place Number	Page Number	Place
12	240	Bagan temples, Mandalay, Myanamar
13	219	Limestone pinnacles at Wulingyuan, Hunan, China
14	164-165	Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong
15	143	Slot Canyon, Utah, USA
16	117	Churchill, Canada
17	115	Lantern Festival, Chiang Mai, Thailand
18	112	Sardine run, Eastern Cape, South Africa
19	110	Holi festival, India
20	86	King penguins, Antarctica
21	61	Angkor Wat, Cambodia
22	49	Humpback whales, Alaska, USA
23	41	Ubari Sand Sea, Libya
24	16	Blue Mountains Nationl Park, New South Wales, Australia

Resources:

1. Lonely Planet’s Beautiful World, published by Lonely Planet in 2013.
2. Atlases, one for every two students, preferably the National Geographic Kids World Atlas.

Notes:

If you’d like, you can turn this into a scored game.  I tend to avoid competitions and scoring, but in some schools the children are used to competitive, scored activities.  If you’d like to do this, let the kids tally one point if they guessed on the right two-page spread in the atlas.  The game is too difficult to ask for the correct country, but the correct region as shown on a two-page spread is reasonable.

In my library, I keep Lonely Planet’s Beautiful World in the reference section.  It can go home over the weekend with a parent, but is not part of weekly circulation.  Coffee table books like this one are so big and heavy that the kids drop them frequently.  And, every drop damages the binding.  So, coffee table books = reference books that need a bit of assistance when traveling.

I wrote this lesson while I was teaching at an international school in Germany.  It was intended for my 4^th graders and their teachers (Shout Out to the amazing Mrs. Dektar and Mrs. Kumar!!) and so is Euro-centric.  If your school is somewhere else, choose locations that focus on the places closest to your school.  I like to take roughly half of the locations from the continent on which your kids go to school, and the second half from around the world.

Recommended books for this lesson: 

Lonely Planet’s Beautiful World, published by Lonely Planet in 2013.

Key Terms:

Landmarks, Atlases, Games, Geography, Maps

The first lesson in the Sense of Place: Geography unit is a lesson on using atlases.  The lesson on atlases is in the Information Literacy theme, under the Reference Materials Unit of Inquiry.  It’s Lesson #4, Atlases #1, Atlases.  Please click here to see the lesson.