For the next seven weeks, I'll be spending Tuesday afternoons with a Year 4 (third grade) class at Daleview Academy, teaching a unit called "America: The Biggest, Bestest, Red-White-and-Bluest Country on Earth."  That's not really the title, but I am teaching a unit on America, weaving in geography, anthropology, political science, and semiotics, as I proselytize for the lost colonies across the pond.

I started today's lesson by clearing up a misconception that the United States is also called Central America because it's in between Canada and Mexico.  I decided to just show where Central America really is and not explain that the US would never stand for being named in relation to the other countries around it.  WHAT IS THIS?...SOUTH AFRICA?...NORTH KOREA?...A WHOLE COUNTRY OF WEST VIRGINIAS?  NO, we're the United States of America, front and center where we ought to be, like when you go down the marker aisle at Staples and they have the Sharpies right in the middle and the off-brand markers that dry up before the end of a yard sale poster way off to the side, because who wants those when a single Sharpie could take you all the way through at least your next five yard sales.  THAT'S RIGHT, WE'RE LIKE A CHISEL-TIP SHARPIE, WHICH GIVES YOU MANY OPTIONS FOR LINE THICKNESS.  Alright, I think my new remit as American ambassador to Leeds may have gone to my head.

The above paragraph notwithstanding, the lesson went quite well.  After looking at a map of the United States and discussing what we noticed about the shapes and names of the states, the students rotated around the classroom to six stations, each representing a different state (New York, Florida, Texas, California, Colorado, and Alaska--sort of a "best of").  At each station, students saw two photographs, one of a person welcoming them to that state and the other of the state's most salient landscape.  Students documented their "travels" through drawing and writing and then came back together to describe similarities and differences between the states they visited.  Most kids had prior knowledge about New York, and some had heard of Florida, but this activity gave kids a better sense of the geographic diversity in the US and helped them understand why questions like "What's the weather like in America?" and "Are there mountains?" are tough to answer.  Next week's lesson will ask students to make comparisons between similar landscapes in the US and the UK (i.e., New York City/London, Rocky Mountains/Scottish Highlands, Miami Beach/Brighton).