Typing Lesson

I am a student studying to be a teacher and for one of my classes we have to do a short read aloud and short lesson to go along with it. I was thinking of reading a book about maps and teaching the class about the continents. Any ideas? Lesson?

Have you considered using a PowerPoint Presentation as a starter to your lesson plan? If you present a vivid visual image of the continents along with the fundamentals of Maps including the coordinate system and how to find locations on the Earth it could provide a base of knowledge upon which to work with.

Visualization of the topic can be an excellent way to begin a lesson plan as not every student learns in the same way. You could experiment with a reading of the topic followed by a video or a video followed by a reading in order to compliment each other and ‘drive the point’ home.

In elementary school I enjoyed watching movies and looked forward to interactive activities. Reading, on the other hand, requires the student to concentrate or focus upon the reader or book. Third-graders may not be able to compete with a mature group of high-school students seeking higher-academic studies.

In short, keep it simple, interesting and fun. Lose their focus and you lose their interest. If your students are eager to come to your class, they will learn.

As a measure of progress, administer simple exams at the end of the week to test the effectiveness of the plan. Have fun.

In Geography lessons, I learned the earth moved a fraction on it`s axis every year.
Yes it was, John .k .
What I meant was the position of the axis .Dose it move ( yes, I take it ) and would it contribute, to the climate change that have took place of late.?
revovles or revolves , ? Sir ha!
both answers in`teresting, thank you.

I’m going to guess you mean pole wander. This is the slow motion of the pole across the Earth’s surface (or vice versa). The link below shows an illustration of the path of the pole since 1900. The scale is in arcseconds; 1 arcsec = (about) 31 meters. You can see that in 100 years, the mean (average) pole has moved about 15 meters. On top of this, the daily pole moves in a rough circle around the mean pole, with radius of about 15 meters and a period of about 14 months.

I don’t think this is going to change global warming anytime soon. Maybe in 100,000 years, but not now.

I am a high school art teacher and just finished teaching about the symbolism of colors, such as yellow being for cheerful, brown for earthy, black for gloomy or dignified, blue for cool, calm, etc. But several students had questions that were more in depth. Like on the source of the dyes and the history of the color, such as why white for weddings, black for funerals, red for a matador’s cape. I asked them to research it on the internet, but I am following my own advice and asking for help ! I tried to think of what I already know and saffron might be a source of yellow, cadmiums, as in red and orange, seem to be highly toxic. I want to know MORE ! And about the dyes/color sources too. I bet it would make a fascinating geography lesson. Thanks in advance.

One thing you may want to consider in you teaching is the cultural differences that relate to color. For instance, in the Asian cultures, white is used at funerals., not black.

In the western cultures, white symbolizes purity. Hence the color associated with a virgin bride.

As far as the red in a matador’s cape. It’s interesting to note that bulls are color blind. The red cape is only for the crowd. The bull is attracted to the movement and attacks that.

So, a very interesting discussion could be developed in how the different cultures interpret the meaning of colors.

I’m teaching 3rd graders Russian Geography this year at our local Saturday Russian School in the US. I was wondering what would be good lessons for them, as I don’t really hang out with 3rd graders a lot, so I don’t know what would be possible for them. I was thinking maybe 3 vocabulary words a week (lake, river, ocean, mountain, etc) in Russian and English, and then have them be able to locate 5 cities, a few oceans, rivers, etc. I’m not sure what else they would be able to learn.

Also, does anyone know where I could find a nice simple Map of Russia online, where they could see a few cities, the major rivers, mountains, etc, and color it in, or something else that would be simple for 3rd graders? Thanks!!
3rd grade! sorry, it’s been a long day!

3rd graders or 8th graders? What age are 3rd graders? There is a great game by Mayfair Games called "Russian Rails":

http://www.mayfairgames.com/shop/product/4500-4699/pages/4503.htm

It is very educational. You build your train tracks, and carry cargo back and forth between various cities. So you lean the major cities, what products come from those areas, etc. It says it is for ages 12 and up.

Mayfair makes these same games for various parts of the world: U.S., Europe, India, Russia, Australia, etc. They are a great fun way to learn Geography.

http://www.mayfairgames.com/

I know of the South China Sea but is it also called the South Sea? The best pearls in the world come from the South Sea area. Are they referring to the South China Sea and why is there such a conflict? Thanks for your input.

The South Sea, or South China Sea as it is known can be found

south of mainland China and Taiwan,
west of the Philippines,
north west of Sabah (Malaysia), Sarawak (Malaysia) and Brunei,
north of Indonesia,
north east of the Malay peninsula (Malaysia) and Singapore, and
east of Vietnam.

It is a part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from Singapore to the Strait of Taiwan of around 3,500,000 km² and is one of the largest sea bodies after the five oceans.

The minute South China Sea Islands, collectively an archipelago, number in the hundreds.

The sea and its mostly uninhabited islands are subject to competing claims of sovereignty by several countries. These claims are also reflected in the variety of names used for the islands and the sea.

The English name is a result of early European interest in the sea as a route from Europe and South Asia to the trading opportunities of China. In the sixteenth century Portuguese sailors called it the China Sea (Mar da China); later needs to differentiate it from nearby bodies of water led to calling it the South China Sea.

In China, the traditional name for the sea is Southern Sea (南海; Nán Hǎi). In contemporary Chinese publications, it is commonly called South China Sea (南中國海, Nán Zhōnggúo Hǎi), and this name is often used in English-language maps published by China.

In Vietnam, it is officially called "East Sea", the part of the South China Sea within Philippine territorial waters is often given the name "Luzon Sea" (although, the name "South China Sea" is still the accepted name for the whole sea)

Hello fellow teachers,

I have to teach my high school students who are about to graduate and have vhosen to take this intensive geography course about Chicago.

I cant find statistics about the changing economy or about poverty or segregation. Those would be interesting things but I just cant seem to find any data on the net.

In addition to that, I am fairly new to teaching (1 year) and that lesson will be observed and graded by 3 persons.

Aaargh!! Thanks for any inspiring ideas for a great geography lesson!

I would start by sharing the the many names of Chicago and then show how the city is set up East West North and South. I want them to see how much it make life in Chicago enjoyable. i would hook them into how to get around like a local. I also link the different resources like cabs, bus, trains and pov. I close by address how the climate in chicago will have a major impact on how you chose to travel in Chicago. and a shortcut would be to use MS ENCARTA. as a resources for most information.

AMERICA is vast continent(group of nations or countries).Others are:Europe, Asia,Africa and Oceania.Esentially, any person born in America is an American(like european,asian african,etc).The American continent has 4 regions to know: North America(México included;the real country’s name is Estados Unidos Mexicanos),Central America,The Antilles(Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles) and South America.Thus,any person born in any of these countries is an AMERICAN and after is natural born of a specific country(mexican, peruvian,colombian,etc).The USA is the only country who has no "natural or original name"(it’s unification of states) like the others;for that reason you took the shorthand name of americans for your citizens Right?

In conclusion,an American is from AMERICA(not only a US citizen!!).You have to know that.

Do you agree?

Well, yes, there are two continents, north and south, with lots of countries.

The problem is, what am I supposed to say when I refer to myself and other citizens of this country?

If there were a term, I’d use it.

But, since my country has a sort of non-name — as opposed to, say, Canada or Brazil — what am I?

It’s kinda nutty, but there weren’t other countries here when this one was named.

So the country is the United States (which people understand to mean this country, and not Mexico), and I’m an American.

I do realize that everyone from these two hunks of land are all Americans, in a different sense, but they can say what they are more specifically, such as Canadians and Brazilians.

We just don’t have a real name.

Oops! I started replying before I finished — yes, we do it because we have no real name.

BTW, Canadians refer to my country as "south of the border" (which is what we call Mexico), you know, just to tweak us.

Yes, there’s "U.S. citizen" but that’s wordy.

I thought we could use "Usans" — for USA-ans, but I doubt it will catch on.

Today, I had my first geography lesson to start my Yr10. In the lesson we did a little work on looking at a world map and finding the patterns of urbanisation on the map. Now, he gave some homework saying to search ‘15 LARGEST cities in the world ‘ into Google. And he said on a well known site, you would find the list. Then, you would have to write down the list and population of each place, and on that site also, if you scroll down or something, you would find out how the answer to the question of how the sizes of these cities are changing.
But he wouldn’t say which site, just that its well-known by most and i Don’t know if he meant LARGEST by size or population or something. Its my first day on this GCSE course and its something to do with the first module so any ideas?? Thank You xx

P.S. Best answer gets 10 points x

http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/agglomerations.htm

About.com is a pretty popular website. It has articles on just about everything you can imagine and it has what you described. As long as you bring a set of results I’m sure it’ll class as your homework completed.

:)

What kind of things did you learn aobut?

What made it good/bad?

Do you think other countries could teach it better?

Better still, do you have any friend’s experiences of geography?

Just asking because my family’s geography’s terrible (Although my maternal granfather went to sea a lot!!) and I saw a question from somebody else on Yahoo asking where a country is.

I’m from the UK and think that geography tends to be badly taught. It also seems to be more aobut the evironment than where other countries actually are tand their cultures.

We don’t even learn where all the palces in the UK are, for crying out loud!! Well, didn’t.

Only got taught geography up till 14 (Not even a GCSE option), and I don’t know if they had geography lessons at primary school. Bear in mind that I went to special needs education till the age of 16.

It’s been a while, but as I recall, it was:
–look at map
–memorize names and locations
–spit it back on a test
–move on to something else

The teacher called on Little Johnny to go to the map and point out where North America is.

Little Johnny looked the map over, found North America, and proudly said, "Here it is, right here!"

"Very good, Johnny," the teacher said. "Now, class, can you tell me who discovered North America?"

So what did the class say ?
Mr.Bollox, Good one, I can’t stop laughing.
LOL, good one Saudi Dude. good one. Just to break the ice at night i put up come crazy questions.

In One Sound they Said ..

lil johnney & GearAz have explored it