The States of the School Yard

3rd Grade Geography-Environmental Study: The Map
Section 2- Chapters 5, 6, 7 (Greek Educational System)

Go to the lesson

 

 cschneiderschoolyard

 It is advisable for the Teachers (mainly for the Greeks) that the following creative lesson is done in 3 parts and completed after all three chapters on the map are taught. If this is not possible, it would be better to do it at the end of the Section about maps.

Materials for the lesson

The creative lesson would best take place in school yard.
Various objects small or large that we will find at school.
Post-it yellow papers.
White paper roll by the of metter, pencils, markers.
Teachers’ Bell.

Layout of the classroom

We use the entire yard of the school. If there are 2 yards, we use both.

1st Phase

The teacher divides the children into two groups.
One group is placed in one end of the school yard and the other group at the other end (as far from each other as possible).

The teacher has given Team A an object from a student from Group B and vice versa. (I.e. team A has the red backpack of Maria from Group B and she in return has picked up George’s jacket from Group A)

2nd Phase

The two groups create an environment with stuff they find in the classroom and around the school: Chairs, their backpacks, boxes from the canteen, baskets and waste bins, small branches and leaves from the trees … anything they can imagine.

They will give this Environment a name: “The State of the yard” etc.

Depending on their shape, they can be called (and written on pappers), what is each building . Trees, buildings, churches, stadiums, etc. There are roads between where children can circulate. At one point they hide the object they took from the other group.

With chalk they paint on the ground a road-path leading to the environment of the other group. The other does also the same.

The path needs to have an “adventure” (It has turns and does not lead to the environment of the other group in a straight line).

3rd Phase

Both teams paint in a large paper the map of the state they made. The map also includes a section of the road leading to the other state.

4th Phase

Election of representatives. The two groups elect 1,2,3 representatives and give them the map of their state. The two delegations maybe together with the other children meet in the middle of the route and exchange the maps they made.

What is required is : for Group A to enter and navigate-with the help of the map-to the state of Group B and using the map to find the object of Mary or George that the teacher gave to each group.

The degree of difficulty in finding objects will be chosen by the teacher.

However, it will be good for the adventure of this lesson to be interesting, not too difficult (to discourage children) or too easy (so that children get bored because they find it all very easy).