Mapping Lesson Plan

Mapping Activity

Grade Level and Unit: First and Second Grade, Immigration…Coming to America

Session and Description of Lesson Tasks: Students will be given a large world map and asked to find a list of countries. The countries will be countries that students’ families in the class have immigrated from. They will work in pairs of three. I will also introduce the concept of continents. Students will attempt to identify what countries are in which continents.

Materials needed: World maps, colored pencils, student survey’s with countries immigrated from, and lists of countries to find.

Grouping Decisions:  Students will work in heterogeneous groups of 3.

Learning goals/Objective(s) What are your core ideas for this lesson? What do you intend all students to know and understand? I would like students to have a better understanding of where the countries their families have immigrated from are located. I also want them to be able to work in their groups well.	Language Objectives? What language will you model during the lesson? What language do you expect to hear during student discourse? North America South America Asia Europe Antarctica Australia Africa Continenties Various country names
Standards: How do the learning goals relate to the standards?
Connect and Anticipate: In what ways does this lesson build on students’ previous knowledge? What student strategies and responses do you anticipate? What misconceptions and struggles might students have? Students will have previous knowledge of where the countries are their own families are from. They may have difficulty finding other students countries. I am also anticipating students having difficulty finding countries in Europe because they are so small and close together. I am hoping they are able to work well in a group and help each other.
Focus Questions Consider what questions you will use to focus on students’ thinking to encourage sense-making and discourse. Launch: To introduce the activity/motivate students. Where are countries located? What are the seven continents? Where are they located? Explore: To assess students’ understanding and to advance their thinking as they work independently, in partners or small group What are the countries you have found? What strategies are you using to find countries? What continents are the countries located on? Summary: To facilitate the analysis and synthesis of ideas shared at the end of the lesson What countries were you able to find? What countries were hard or you were unable to find? Did you work well within your group? Where are the countries you found located? How would someone immigrate from that country to America today? In 1600?

Evidence: How will you know what students understand? What evidence will you collect? (If there is an exit task, what will be its focus to inform you instructional next steps?) The evidence I will collect are their maps and list of countries where they should have indicated the continent it was located on if possible. I will be able to tell if students understood the task if they were able to find some countries and color them in.

Pitfalls and Solutions:

                ELL: I do not anticipate ELL students to have difficulty with this task.

Special Ed.: These students will be paired in groups with children who are more capable of completing this task. This way they are able to accomplish the task and not feel discouraged by not being able to find the countries. I will also have them specifically look for the country their family is from so they may be able to find this easier.

Reflection: I learned a lot from implementing this lesson. I think that students really enjoyed doing this and liked finding the countries they were from as well as where other students were from. However, I realized that I should have given an even number of countries for each group to look for. The lists I gave each group of three students have seven countries so they had difficulty dividing the numbers equally. Also, students had a lot of difficulty finding countries in Europe because the map I used had abbreviations for the countries. Next time I will fill out a map first and be able to tell students what the abbreviations are they should be looking for. I also did not consider that England would be labeled United Kingdom on the map and Holland, Netherlands.