Here is a great introduction to geography or a review to see what the students already know. I used this lesson at the beginning of the year for a review. The top two things that I noticed about teaching geography are that you need to make it interesting and relevant to the students. This lesson does both.
You will need road maps of the United States, rulers, small pieces of paper with cities names on them (I did all the cities that had a MLB team, NFL team or a NBA team) and a set of encyclopedias for this lesson. The students will need paper and a pen or pencil.
The part you need to introduce to the students is that they are going to plan a trip around the U.S. They can either plan a sports trip or a concert trip. I threw the concert part in because not all students are interested in sports, but you can find things that will interest them (concerts, shopping, site seeing, etc.) Put the students into groups of two. Groups of two tend to do better than three or more. With three or more there was always someone sitting there not doing a whole lot.
Here is where I start to make it fun for them. I put all the pieces of paper (see above) into a shoe box and then let them pick from the box. Each group had to at least pick three times. The first pick is where they will start their trip, second pick is where they go to first, third is the last place to visit. I had them pick at random because if you let them do it then the students will plan the easiest way possible.
Once the cities have been picked the students will then chart out the trip. I have them use the maps to figure out the directions from one city to the other. They need to keep track of the route, direction and the states they go through (ex. South on Route 95 through Virginia). This part takes a lot of team work because they need to read a map and record information at the same time. Make sure they understand how to record when they leave one route for another. I kept this part easy. They just recorded what junction they got off onto a new route. Have them double check their route.
The next step of the project is research based. Each person in the group (they do their own) has to pick three states that they travel through. I then had them look for basic state information like; the year of the state founding, the state capital, 2 interesting facts of the state’s history, five chief products from the state and 2 geographic characteristics. All of this information should be in all sets of encyclopedias.
That was the end of the social studies part of the project. As I walked around while they were working and I looked at the final product a few question were answered. Were they able to work with a partner? Did they know basic geography of the U.S.? Could they record information down in a logical order? Did they know how to research from an encyclopedia? Could that be recorded logically?
I then did different things with this, depending on who I was teaching with. I have had the students present some of the information (one state each) to the class and tell the cities they went to. We also did this as an intergraded unit. For Language Arts the students wrote a journal of their trip. This involves a little more research because they have to explain what is in the state. I also had them tell about the game or concert or mall they visited. The math part of this is a little more time consuming for the students, but I did an abbreviated version. I had the students keep track of how far they traveled on the trip. They also kept track of how far did they traveled from one highway to another and then how far to the next city on their trip. For science we got into the geographic characteristics of the state, mountains, rivers, lakes and oceans.
Overall the best part of this project is that it is different for each student. Not one group will take the same trip. Since they have to do three states research each they all have different states to do. If you have them present to the class then they will each learn about other states and you can help them work on their oral presentation skills. Since they are thinking this is a sports, concert or shopping trip they won’t even realize that they are doing work.
