2nd assignment and grade report

Our second assignment is a bit more challenging than the first. The first assignment required students to learn the locations of continents, including Europe. The second requires them to learn the locations of 11 European physical features: the Rhine river, Danube river, English Channel, Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Alps mountains, Pyrenees mountains, Ural mountains, European Plain, Iberian Peninsula, and Scandinavian Peninsula. In this second assignment students are also expected to begin understanding why these physical features are important-rivers are used for trade, the European Plain is used for farming, the English Channel somewhat isolates the British islands, the Ural mountains are one dividing line between Europe and Asia, etc... We'll have a grade on this in the middle of this week.

If your child has not shown you her graded continents assignment, please ask about it. I've graded all of them, and returned all those except a few without names and one or two others.

The average grade on this first assignment was very high-almost 100-because the students worked very hard. Don't forget that your child can re-do most assignments, including this one, if he makes a low grade.

Rhine map image from

http://www.rollintl.com/roll/rhine.gif

first assignment

We'll be studying Europe, Latin America, Canada, and Australia this year. Its hard to study a place if you can't locate it on a map.

The first assignment is in three parts.

Part one is to learn the locations and general shapes and relative sizes of North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia, and Antarctica. This doesn't mean just labeling them on a map. Students need to recognize the shape when they see it, even if it's "upside down." They should be able to create an accurate map from the continent shapes, like a jigsaw puzzle.

Part two is to identify where Latin America is located, using continent names. This is more difficult for some students, because Latin America is made up of all of one continent and only part of another, and the reason for this is historical/cultural, not just geography.

Part three is to understand what North, East, South and West mean (North isn't always at the top of a map), to understand the location of the Northern and Southern hemispheres, and use the directions and hemispheres to describe the locations of the places we'll be studying.

This assignment should take 3-4 days, as we'll also be dealing with lockers, learning names, class procedures, slow lunches, bus delays, and all the other stuff involved when school begins.

This online game is helpful

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/World_Continents.htm