U.S. Regions – Teaching Notes

The units designed and showcased within the Techno-Bowl website have been created to engage students in higher-level cognitive skills.  For those of us who have “tested” these units with our students, we discovered that some of the students have been anxious at the beginning of the unit because the assignment is open-ended and the students have to “fill in the gaps” with their own creativity and research.  These units were intentionally designed to fully engage students in this manner and cover Archdiocesan Outcomes.   

Some of the websites we have chosen are a little bit advanced for 4^th Grade.  You might want to walk students through these websites explaining concepts as you go. 

The following site is designed to help teach 3^rd and 4^th grade students how to correctly cite sources used from the web: http://www.yahooligans.com/tg/45.html

There is a wonderful website on U.S. Regions with several lesson plan ideas: http://members.aol.com/MrDonnHistory/States.html#Regions

Prior Knowledge Requirements:

      Kid Pix Slide Shows, Power Point, or Hyper Studio

      How to correctly site web sources (http://www.yahooligans.com/tg/45.html)

    Saving images from web site and inserting them in Power Point or HyperStudio

Important Notes: 

      Because of the amount of on-line research and the requirement for using pictures and graphics from the web, it is imperative that the students learn how to cite each of these sources correctly.   This may be a good opportunity for a lesson on plagiarism. 

      Show and discuss the rubric.  Stress to the students that they are graded using this rubric.  Make sure they understand if any elements are missing they will be graded down.

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© February 2002 Lisa Blaes, Eileen Colling, DeAnna Denney, Sheila Hagemann, and Jean Napier-Faeih