Positional language and map making

Understanding how to use prepositional language is a fundamental skill children require for a number of curriculum subjects such as Maths and English, but the place where this skill is required the most is in the subject of Geography.

Last fortnight I discussed how to teach the concepts of special places and today I want to build on that blog post to discuss the importance of prepositional language in map making.

In the Australian HASS curriculum, Foundation students are required to discuss and map the features of special places using prepositional language and in Year 1 students need to label and map places using directional language. So a solid understanding of prepositional words and their use is essential before you can begin map making.

A good test of your students' understanding of prepositional language is the Drawing Game. This is always a good warm-up as well, before starting your Geography lessons.

Students take a blank piece of paper and follow each instruction you give them (give them slowly so they have processing time).

• Draw a sun in the top left-hand corner
• Draw a hill in the middle of the paper
• Draw a house on top of the hill
• Draw a road below the hill
• Draw a flower in front of the house
• Draw a cat next to the flower
• Draw a bee in between the flower and the cat

And keep going to cover any new prepositional words you might want to use that day. When done, review student work and see who is the good listener and who doesn't know their prepositional words (listening is also a skill required for following prepositional directions). 

You can make all sorts of fun games with prepositions such as using the Prepositional Flash Cards (found in my store) to play a very funny classroom game. Give a student a soft toy (or any object but soft toys look funnier) and then pull out a prepositional flash card and the student must demonstrate the preposition with the toy. So you may pull out 'in between' and the student has to place the soft toy in between themselves and another student, 'on top' they might place it on their head! 

Once your students are familiar with prepositional words, then move on to some Prepositional Activities such as the sentence pull through (also available in my store). Get students to practice creating and working with sentences with prepositional words in them.

Now the ground work for prepositions has been done, you can move on to map making. Begin with front view (birds-eye view is harder to explain at this point but you can move on to more advanced map making later, but the purpose just now is to understand the reason you make maps; to state where objects are). 

As with all subjects, move from what the student knows and understands to the unknown. So begin with mapping the classroom, the most familiar place to your students. Start by brainstorming the features of the classroom and move to mapping out those features on your whiteboard. 

After the classroom, you can move to your discussion of special places (grab my freebie in my last blog post) and move to the school playground. You can take map making further by discussing what makes this place special and build upon this with a daily writing task. 

Lastly, get students to demonstrate what they have learnt by getting them to map a place very familiar to just them... their bedroom! This is a great homework task and will really let you see what they can do with their map making. If parents do decide to help students at home, this is a double bonus as they can reinforce the skills they have learnt and see what their child is capable of doing on their own. 

You may find these products useful for map making and all are available in my store bundle. 

How to improve your students' understanding of Geographic places

I've enjoyed teaching Geography to Preps (Kinder) for many years and thought I'd share some ideas I use teaching Geographic features of special places from the Foundation Year Curriculum.

What is a feature?

A feature is something that is distinctive to a person, place or thing. 

For example: your eyes are a feature of your face, a desk is a feature of a classroom, a runway is a feature of an airport.

As with all teaching, start with what the students know. Get students to draw their face, then label and record their features. Explore the features of the classroom (chairs, tables, windows), the features of their library (books, tables, seats) and the features of other places such as supermarkets (trolleys, checkouts, food).

Practice observing, recording and labelling these features over and over again and the students will start to understand the term 'features' plus they will get some practice observing, recording and labelling (a process that is used in nearly every subject from Science to Maths). 

What is a special place?

A special place is a place that is special to a person or group of people because they might have special memories there or it might hold religious or cultural significance (this term 'significance' is used over and over again throughout the HASS curriculum from Prep to Year 6 so you may as well start to use it with the students and get them familiar with it!).

Bring in a photograph of your favourite place and discuss why it is special to you. Make a comparison between an 'everyday place' like the supermarket and your 'special place'. 

Discuss culturally significant places such as Uluru or religious places such as churches. What makes these places special to some people or groups of people? Brainstorm the answers with students so you eventually have a list of what makes a place special. You can keep referring back to this anchor chart when you ask students '... what makes this place special?'. By the way, I am terrible at making anchor charts by hand so have created this free download for you, should you want to use it in your classroom!

Encourage students to bring in photographs of their special places and create a wall display in your classroom. This also fits in nicely to the History curriculum with regards to events that are special to families (such as holidays). 

Now what?

Now the fun part! Now you can take students exploring! 

Ask students where a special place might be in the school (they will undoubtedly say the playground) and run it through the test of 'what makes a place special?' before you decide to go there. 

Pair students up and give each pair a piece of paper and a clipboard. Tell the students that Person A must describe the features of the special place and Person B must draw them on a map. After a while students can swap roles. This encourages 'think, pair, share', keeps students focused (hurray for 'allowed talking time'!) and stops students from going off track. Of course, you'll want to pair your high and low students together but both will get an opportunity to write/draw and give oral descriptions. 

Once you have finished your observation  of your special place, return to the classroom and pull up each example the students have created. Let each pair discuss the features they found. The added oral element will encourage students to be accountable for their work and will help build their conceptual understanding of the key vocabulary used.

Where to next? Prepositional language!

How QR codes can create a seamless digital classroom for you

You're trying to integrate digital technologies into your classroom in a seamless way, but when you do get access to the school iPads, you don't know what to do with them! Your early years students can't find the website you want them to go to and they can't remember their password anyway! Does this sound like you?

Never, in the history of teaching, have teachers been expected to do more work with digital technology without the access to adequate resources.

So what can you do to seamlessly integrate digital technologies into your classroom?

I'll let you into a little secret - QR codes!

If you're familiar with barcodes on products in the supermarket, then you already understand the concept of QR codes. You scan the code with a QR scanner (visit the App store to find free apps for this) and it takes you to the website, image, picture etc.. that you want your students to go to. 

Okay, so some of you are familiar with QR codes but did you know you can create your own QR codes?

Yes, that's right. No more writing website addresses on the screen. No more http://...anything anymore!

How can you use them in your class?

Here are just a few ways I use them in my classroom:

1. Quickly accessing that regularly used website. It could be Mathletics, Reading Eggs or just an online dictionary. Copy and paste the url into the QR code generator and save the QR code. Copy and paste the code into a word document many times, print and cut, then give to students to stick inside their English/Math/Homework book for quick reference.

2. When you want your students to visit one random website as part of a lesson. Create a QR code (as listed above) and save to your computer. With your computer plugged into the whiteboard, display the QR code and let your students scan the code from their desks.

3. To show parents examples of student work. Save student work samples into a Google Drive document (one folder per student) and create a shareable code for that folder by clicking the three little stars on the top right hand corner (as shown below). 

That then becomes your url and copy and paste this into a QR code generator. When you have parent/teacher meetings, stick the code to your student's folder and scan for parents, so they can view their work as you talk. Even better still, print a copy of the QR code so that parents can take it home and review their child's work in their own time! (Note: you don't need a Google Drive account to access the files via shareable urls but you will want to make sure the files are not editable). 

Those are just a few ways you can use QR codes to help you in the classroom. Can you recommend some others below in the comments section?

If you'd like to try one of my QR codes, scan the image below and you'll see how they work.

4 Fantastic Chinese New Year Classroom Activities

Chinese New Year (16th February 2018) is a fantastic opportunity for students to explore other cultures and traditional celebrations. 

The Australian History Curriculum encourages the exploration of other cultural celebrations:

Foundation Year

How they, their family and friends commemorate past events that are important to them.

Year 1

How the present, past and future are signified by terms indicating time, as well as by dates and changes that may have personal significance, such as birthdays, celebrations and seasons.

Year 3

Days and weeks celebrated in Australia...and celebrations and commemorations in places around the world such as Chinese New Year.

There are some easy ways to bring this celebration into your classroom, to not only keep your classroom inclusive, but there is nothing nicer than bringing that HASS curriculum to life in a fun engaging way. History is not boring folks!

One: Make Chinese hanging lanterns

These are so easy to make. You can find the template in my Chinese New Year pack or watch the directions in this video. Once they are strung together across the classroom they look fantastic!

Two: Make Money Envelopes

Again, super easy to make and the students love them. You can discuss the significance of the red envelopes and how much money is usually given by visiting this website. I have used the envelope template inside Chinese New Year pack but you can use regular envelopes and colour them red. Obviously your students can't place money inside them but they can make some money (either Australian dollars or use Chinese currency on them if you'd like to explore that). You can also integrate these into maths rotations if you want to take the experience further in your classroom!

Three: Chinese New Year symbolism posters

Students love to colour and teachers love a colouring activity that has meaning, so incorporate both with this free Chinese New Year Colour Page. You can use this website to explore the symbolism and the meaning with students or you'll find the Chinese New Year flip book a useful tool for taking students through the celebration in more detail.

Four: Chinese Dragon Art Work activity

Explore the use of warm and cool colours in this simple but effective colouring activity. Show students how to colour the image in warm colours and the outside in cool colours. Once it is complete these make fantastic wall displays in the classroom or around windows.

Learning about China can be so much fun! If you have students with Chinese connections, why not ask them to bring an item from China in for a show and tell or better still, bring some Chinese food in to share! Most students and parents are so excited to share an aspect of their culture with their school friends and it makes for an exciting History lesson as well!