Rivers of the World-Lesson One-North America (Cindy's Post)

The first Rivers of the World lesson was on the Mississippi. I wasn't able to pre-load the kids with any information as we needed them to take the Science and Social Studies pre-test without any previous exposure. This meant the lesson had to follow the pre-test, and still have enough time for the kids to learn how to do a running stitch and then apply it to their fabric Map of the World. I took over the academic portion of the lesson to get a solid start (Marie could have easily handled this, but we were crunched for time!)

We began with Marie's reading of "Living Near a River", which the students thoroughly enjoyed. We created a Wordsplash of the word "RIVER", which the students copied in their sketchbooks.
We then got out our atlases and found the rivers in North America, noticing how they meandered and at times fed into other rivers. We noted that a lot of the time, the rivers became the boundaries for the states.

We then focused on the Mississippi River and noted how it separated the states. We found where it began (the source) and where it ended (the mouth, which was where it took on the shape of a DELTA). We noted that it emptied into the gulf of Mexico.

I then did a picture walk of a book on the Mississippi River, where we took notes on sticky notes when we heard or noticed facts pertaining to its PEOPLE, ANIMALS, PLANTS, USES, HOUSES, and PROBLEMS. We added the sticky notes to a chart I had made. This lesson sets up the type of information we will look for in other books on rivers.

Marie then gave the students the lesson on stitching (the running stitch) and they found the source of the Mississippi and the mouth of the Mississippi, drew a meandering line between them, and stitched their running stitch. Success!