Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
"Alice Ramsey's Grand Adventure"
Speaking of "Mapping the Americas",this is a great story by Don Brown. If you are not familiar with the book, it follows young Alice in 1909 when she and three others drove across the USA from NYC to San Francisco. See the website listed below for this book as well as a terrific geography lesson plan!
http://www.booksbybrown.com/alicepage.html (website)
http://www.iupui.edu/~geni/lsort/ridingalice.html ( LESSON PLAN!!)
(Thank you, Melissa (GeoAction) for this reference!)
GeoAction! theme: Mapping the Americas
This year's GeoAction! theme is "Mapping the Americas". One of the teachers I met at the GeoAction! training in Washington, D.C. told me of his friends' goals to bike from Alaska to Argentina (about 10,000 miles!!!!). His friends' names are Harry and Ivana and they have the most beautiful, amazing website chronicling their travels...talk about the "Mapping the Americas"..they are living the Americas!
WOW! Follow their adventures here:
Read "Across" America
For all those looking to find a great list of Geography/Social Studies reading and picture books for your children and students-- NEA has a great link!
http://www.nea.org/readacross/resources/statebooks.html
"A popular activity is to "travel" across a map of the U.S. by reading a book that takes place in each of the states. (A variation is to read a book whose author lives in a particular state, or a book about a particular state.) If your class is participating in this activity and you are a book or two short, or your students are eager for more, try these titles from their "State-by-State Booklist".
For a supporting geography activity: Place a map of the U.S. on the wall, and mark-off, or put a sticker on each state as students read books from the above list...to "track your reading adventures" across the U.S.! Challenge students to read about all 50 states during the year!!
GeoAction!
I received some new training from National Geographic last month in Washington, D.C. Apparently, I am the new "state coordinator" for GeoAction! -- a 5-year program from NGS to "take GeoAction" by providing geography materials and training to support Geography Awareness Week (Nov. 16-22, 2008). It is my lovely responsibility now to distribute the posters, cd/teacher toolkits (lesson plans) and maps provided by NGS out to the teachers. At this point I have 1000 posters, maps, & (soon to arrive) cd toolkits for dispersal and MANY presentations to make during the next year. I am excited to help get great geography materials out to teachers---ultimately to have more geography taught in the classrooms. I'm really going to be busy this next month, and I will be posting items here related to or in support of GeoAction! activities that I will be sharing throughout Utah. The following pics are from my GeoAction! training in D.C.:
To see more of the "Cool Globes" exhibit at the U.S. Botanic gardens Display:
http://www.usbg.gov/upload/one_planetalbum-3.html
http://www.usbg.gov/upload/imagegallery3-9.html
More photos to follow....The last few photos were taken when we visited the Costa Rican Embassy for a big, fancy reception in honor of our "geography work" and GeoAction!dedication/graduation on the last day of our training.
