Teaching State Locations

For a few years I taught a seventh grade geography class. When I first got my students they had no idea where most states were located unless they were near where they lived or where they had lived in the past. Unbelievably, I found the best way to teach them these locations was to let them color in maps. Of course I had a few rules for this coloring project. Students had to color neatly, they had to locate the capital in each state and the part that really made it stick out. None of the states that touched each other could be the same color. That sounds easy enough until you really look at how the map is set up. By the time we were ready for the test the kids told me they would just remember the colors of ‘their’ state map and for the most part the names of the states came flooding back. You’d think by seventh grade kids wouldn’t be interested in coloring anymore or that they wouldn’t learn from coloring. Not so. I’d say that was my most successful geography lesson that year. The kids ‘got it’ and had fun. How great is that?

Photo Credit: Laffy4k

September 4th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Uncategorized | (0)