I have a low performing child in my 5th grade geography class.?

Question

Doe anyone know of a resource I could use to teach her. I've tried coloring sheets and such, but I don't think she's learning anything. She performs at the 1st grade level.

Answer 1

I have a board game called Name That State that my daughter loves to play. We also got a globe and once a week she spins it and whatever country comes up (she closes her eyes and points) we do some research about it. We draw pics, make food from that region, look at indigenous clothing and plants.

Answer 2

If your 5Th grade student is performing at 1st grade level and she is not a child with a designated learning disability, Something is seriously wrong. Please talk with her other teachers and see where she is at in their classes. The school district needs to assess her abilities & make sure she is an the appropriate learning evironment for her abilities. This is not something coloring sheets can fix. Good Luck and thanks for noticing

Answer 3

You have to talk to the parents in a meeting with the psychology, director and head teacher. They need to help this child now, besides the work you could do in the classroom. I am a mother of an 11 year old boy, he is in 5th. grade, and thanks to a teacher who open my eyes I started looking for help and the results are mouth opening.
You are a great teacher, your concern for this child shows your good heart and compassion, but there is much more that can be done, with the parents, teachers, therapist and psychologist.
Best of luck, and may God bless good teachers like you!

Answer 4

make up some class wide team games. Races and such. sometimes peer to peer teaching is best of all. Another could be a bingo like game with prizes for individuals AND teams.

Answer 5

while a individual is drained that's easy to declare the incorrect ingredient. skinny skinned anti-Obama fringe appropriate attempt to belittle Obama for questioning one ingredient and asserting yet another. probable via fact President Bush made maximum of errors while he spoke. so a strategies in 3 years they have the single incident of him asserting fifty seven states, while he meant 50, and this week mixing up Colorado and Wyoming on the map. If that's all they have i might say that Obama is doing much greater valuable than they or Bush ought to diminish than the stress he has to bear. So, why are you dropping it gradual asking this stupid question rather of criticizing the Republicans for not passing the roles invoice that Moody's says might create a million.9 million jobs, upload 2 factors to the GDP and do away with the possibility of a recession next year?

Answer 6

If you have assesed her and her true instructional range is a 1st grade level...refer her for spec ed testing immediately. That is 4 yrs below and no matter what tactics you use at this point she will not grasp because the content is too abstract. Remember a true 1st grade level is just beginning to read monosyllabic words.

Answer 7

See, I think 5th grade is too young for geography; heck, my third-grader has to learn it. Too young - they should concentrate on reading, writing and arithmetic exclusively in the primary grades.

Nevertheless, there used to be puzzles of the states that were kind of fun at that level, and included some elementary information, as well as the arrangement.

Having one's own globe might interest one of that age.

Answer 8

You can only do so much but have you tried asking the child what you can do to help her. I think children know more than what you think they know. Sometimes you have done all you can do and the rest should be up to the parents. Good luck

Answer 9

Talk to her parents and suggest they get her a tutor.. maybe do alittle research to give to them on available tutors..

Answer 10

This is an excellent report and activity manual for parents wanting to help kids learn Geography:

“Helping Your Child Learn Geography”

Remember thumbing through an atlas or encyclopedia as a child, imagining yourself as a world traveler on a safari in Africa, or boating up the Mississippi River, climbing the peaks of the Himalayas, visiting ancient cathedrals and castles of Europe, the Great Wall of China?

We do. The world seemed full of faraway, exotic, and wonderful places that we wanted to know more about.

Today, we would like to believe that youngsters are growing up similarly inquisitive about the world.

Perhaps they are, but recent studies and reports indicate that, if such imaginings are stirring in our youngsters, they're not being translated into knowledge.

Not that there ever was a "golden age" when all our young and all our citizens were conversant about the peoples and places of the globe.

Still, there is considerable evidence that such knowledge among young Americans has dipped to an alarming low.

Last year, a nine-nation survey found that one in five young Americans (18- to 24-year-olds) could not locate the United States on an outline map of the world.

Young Americans knew measurably less geography than Americans 25 years of age and over.

Only in the United States did 18- to 24-year-olds know less than people 55 years old and over; in all eight other nations, young adults knew more than the older ones.

No less disturbing was the fact that our young adults, when compared with young adults in other countries, came in last place in a 1980 Gallup Poll.

Our 18- to 24-year-olds knew less about geography than their age-mates in every other participating nation. But it shouldn't surprise us. Youngsters in other countries study more geography. In England, Canada, and the Soviet Union, geography is considered one of the basic academic subjects and is required of most secondary students; in the United States, only one in seven students takes a high school geography course.

You'd think that our students learn at least some geography, though, in their world history classes. Those who take world history probably do. But that's only 44 percent of our high school graduates. More than half of our high school students are graduating without studying world history.

If youngsters are to acquire an appreciation of geography and ultimately learn to think geographically, parents and communities must insist that local schools restore it to prominence in the curriculum. They should insist that geography be studied and learned, in one form or another, through several years of the primary and secondary curriculum.

Learning should not be restricted to the classroom. Parents are a child's first teachers and can do much to advance a youngster's geographic knowledge. This booklet suggests some ways to do so.

It is based on a fundamental assumption: that children generally learn what adults around them value. The significance attached to geography at home or at school can be estimated in a glance at the walls and bookshelves.

Simply put, youngsters who grow up around maps and atlases are more likely to get the "map habit" than youngsters who do not. Where there are maps, atlases, and globes, discussions of world events (at whatever intellectual level) are more likely to include at least a passing glance at their physical location. Turning to maps and atlases frequently leads youngsters to fashion, over time, their own "mental maps" of the world--maps that serve not only to organize in their minds the peoples, places, and things they see and hear about in the news, but also to suggest why certain events unfold in particular places.



Helping every child develop his or her ability to use maps and to develop mental maps of the world ought to become a priority in our homes and schools. For, as we all know, our lives are becoming an ever tighter weave of interactions with people around the world. If our businesses are to fare well in tomorrow's world markets, if our national policies are to achieve our aims in the future, and if our relationships with other peoples are to grow resilient and mutually enriching, our children must grow to know what in the world is where.



This booklet is designed to help parents stir children's curiosity and steer that curiosity toward geographic questions and knowledge. It is organized around the five themes recently set forth by geographers and geography educators across the Nation--the physical location of a place, the character of a place, relationships between places, movement of people and things, and phenomena that cause us to group places into particular regions.



We encourage parents to get to the fun part--that is, the activities. The games, maps, and suggested activities that follow, while informal and easy to do, can help lay a solid foundation in experience for children's later, more academic forays into geography.

Introduction

Children are playing in the sand. They make roads for cars. One builds a castle where a doll can live. Another scoops out a hole, uses the dirt to make a hill, and pours some water in the hole to make a lake. Sticks become bridges and trees. The children name the streets, and may even use a watering can to make rain.

Although they don't know it, these children are learning the principles of geography. They are locating things, seeing how people interact with he Earth, manipulating the environment, learning how weather changes the character of a place, and looking at how places relate to each other through the movement of things from one place to another.

With this book, we hope you, as parents, will get ideas for activities that will use your children's play to informally help them learn more geography--the study of the Earth.

Most of the suggestions in this book are geared to children under 10 years of age. The activities and games are organized around five specific themes that help focus our thinking. These themes were developed by the Joint Committee on Geographic Education of the National Council for Geographic Education and the American Association of Geographers and are now being used in many schools. They are:

1. Where are things located?

2. What makes a place special?

3. What are the relationships among people and places?

4. What are the patterns of movement of people, products, and information?

5. How can the Earth be divided into regions for study?

These themes have been adopted by many schools in the last few years and may be new to many parents. To help focus your awareness of the issues, we will begin each chapter with a brief description of the theme. This description includes examples of questions geographers use as they strive to understand and define the Earth, for geography provides us with a system for asking questions about the Earth.

Location:
Position on the Earth's Surface

Look at a map. Where are places located? To determine location, geographers use a set of imaginary lines that crisscross the surface of the globe. Lines designating "latitude" tell us how far north or south of the equator a place is. Lines designating "longitude" measure distance east and west of the prime meridian--an imaginary line running between the North Pole and the South Pole through Greenwich, England. You can use latitude and longitude as you would a simple grid system on a state highway map. The point where the lines intersect is the "location"--or global address. For example, St. Louis, Missouri, is roughly at 39° (degrees) north latitude and 90° west longitude.

Why are things located in particular places and how do those places influence our lives? Location further describes how one place relates to another. St. Louis is where the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers meet about midway between Minneapolis-St. Paul and New Orleans. It developed as a trading center between east and west, north and south.

Directions

To help young children learn location, make sure they know the color and style of the building in which they live, the name of their town, and their street address. Then, when you talk about other places, they have something of their own with which to compare.

* Children need to understand positional words. Teach children words like "above" and "below" in a natural way when you talk with them or give them directions. When picking up toys to put away, say, "Please put your toy into the basket on the right" or, "Put the green washcloth into the drawer." Right and left are as much directional terms as north, south, east, and west. Other words that describe such features as color, size, and shape are also important.

* Show your children north, south, east, and west by using your home as a reference point. Perhaps you can see the sun rising in the morning through a bedroom window that faces east and setting at night through the westerly kitchen window:

* Reinforce their knowledge by playing games. Once children have their directional bearings, you can hide an object, for example, then give them directions to its location: "two steps to the north, three steps west ...."

* Use pictures from books and magazines to help your children associate words with visual images. A picture of a desert can stimulate conversation about the features of a desert--arid and barren. Work with your children to develop more complex descriptions of different natural and cultural features.

Maps

Put your child's natural curiosity to work. Even small children can learn to read simple maps of their school, neighborhood, and community. Here are some simple map activities you can do with your children.

* Go on a walk and collect natural materials such as acorns and leaves to use for an art project. Map the location where you found those items.

* Create a treasure map for children to find hidden treats in the back yard or inside your home. Treasure maps work especially well for birthday parties.

* Look for your city or town on a map. If you live in a large city or town, you may even be able to find your street. Point out where your relatives or your children's best friends live.

* Find the nearest park, lake, mountain, or other cultural or physical feature on a map. Then, talk about how these features affect your child's life. Living near the ocean may make your climate moderate, prairies may provide an open path for high winds, and mountains may block some weather fronts.

* By looking at a map, your children may learn why they go to a particular school. Perhaps the next nearest school is on the other side of a park, a busy street, or a large hill. Maps teach us about our surroundings by portraying them in relation to other places.

* Before taking a trip, show your children a map of where you are going and how you plan to get there. Look for other ways you could go, and talk about why you decided to use a particular route. Maybe they can suggest other routes.

* Encourage your children to make their own maps using legends with symbols. Older children can draw a layout of their street, or they can illustrate places or journeys they have read about. Some books, like Winnie-the-Pooh and The Wizard of Oz, contain fanciful maps. These can be models for children to create and plot their own stories.

* Keep a globe and a map of the United States near the television and use them to locate places talked about on television programs, or to follow the travels of your favorite sports team.

Additional Activities

Children use all of their senses to learn about the world. Objects that they can touch, see, smell, taste, and hear help them understand the link between a model and the real thing.

* Put together puzzles of the United States or the world. Through the placement of the puzzle pieces, children gain a tactile and visual sense of where one place is located in relation to others.

* Make a three-dimensional map of your home or neighborhood using milk cartons for buildings. Draw a map of the block on a piece of cardboard, then cut up the cartons (or any other three-dimensional item) and use them to represent buildings. Use bottle tops or smaller boxes to add interest to the map, but try to keep the scale relationships correct.

* Use popular board games like "Game of the States" or "Trip Around the World" to teach your children about location, commerce, transportation, and the relationships, among different countries and areas of the world. Some of these games are available at public libraries.

* Make paper-mache using strips of old newspaper and a paste made from flour and water. If children form balls by wrapping the strips of paper-mache around a balloon, they will develop a realistic understanding of the difficulties in making accurate globes. They can also use paper-mache to make models of hills and valleys.

Place:
Physical and Human Characteristics

Every place has a personality. What makes a place special? What are the physical and cultural characteristics of your hometown? Is the soil sandy or rocky? Is the temperature warm or is it cold? If it has many characteristics, which are the most distinct?

How do these characteristics affect the people living there? People change the character of a place. They speak a particular language, have styles of government and architecture, and form patterns of business. How have people shaped the landscapes?

Investigate Your Neighborhood

* Walk around your neighborhood and look at what makes it unique. Point out differences from and similarities to other places. Can your children distinguish various types of homes and shops? Look at the buildings and talk about their uses. Are there features built to conform with the weather or topography? Do the shapes of some buildings indicate how they were used in the past or how they're used now? These observations help children understand the character of a place.

* Show your children the historical, recreational, or natural points of interest in your town. What animals and plants live in your neighborhood? If you live near a harbor, pay it a visit, and tour a docked boat. You can even look up the shipping schedule in your local newspaper. If you live near a national park, a lake, a river, or a stream, take your children there and spend time talking about its uses.

* Use songs to teach geography. "Home on the Range," "Red River Valley," and "This Land Is Your Land" conjure up images of place. Children enjoy folk songs of different countries like "Sur La Pont D'Avignon, .... Guantanamara," and "London Bridge." When your children sing these songs, talk with them about the places they celebrate, locate them on the map, and discuss how the places are described.

FULL REPORT HERE:

http://free-toddlers-activity-and-discipline-guide.com/toddlers-activity-kids-learning-resources-Learn-Geography.html