Maps, maps, and more maps...

28 February 2012

My 5th graders are working on finishing up a unit on ¨A Town in Peru.¨ Sounds pretty exotic, right?

However, it basically means that they are learning city vocabulary, prepositions, and there is/there are.

In order to practice this in a fun and engaging way, I told the kids that we were going to invent our own city and that we could put whatever we want in it!

First, we started by making a list of what the city contains using there is/there are. I told them that we could put whatever we want in the city. It didn´t have to just be vocabulary from the chapter. Some of my favorite answers were:

• There are no people in the city.
• There is a discotech. 
• There isn´t a school. 
• There are five libraries. 

Then, we had to draw a map of our city. 

There were a couple ways that I thought about doing this part of the activity. At first, I thought it would be interesting to have each individual write a few sentences about their individual city--such as: There is a park next to the school. The school is opposite the supermarket. The supermarket is behind the police station. They would then have to read their sentences to a partner and tell their partner where to put each item. 

However, in my experience so far, the kids aren´t as accustomed to group work as kids in the US. So I thought it would be better to do the activity as a group--which turned out to be the best choice possible.

First, I asked students about the shape of the city, and whether they wanted a round city or a rectangular city. Two of the classes had rectangular cities, and one class had a round city. My host teacher made an interesting observation about their choices. Choosing a round form suggests that the group is perhaps more open-minded. They were certainly more creative than any of the other groups--using both affirmative and negative; plural and singular.  

Students had to tell me where to put each item on the board. Just to mix things up a little, I´d also ask them about the size of each building. 

Here are the three maps that we constructed with 5th grade!