Kings Park Elementary

51st State

Teachers started the unit by giving their students some background knowledge of Virginia and connecting it to what they already know.
	After reading the letter from Cyrus Quigley, the teacher modeled what a state brochure might look like.
	Then students chose topics and designed a book about Virginia. They took pride in their pages.

Using Community Construction Kit, the children made buildings that they could place on a map.

	Then they placed their structures on a grid to show a rural and urban setting on the map grid.
Students practiced their mapping skills by looking at all different kinds of maps and then playing a desktop grid activity.

After reading about different landforms, and trying out their hands at forming them in clay and paper, students came to the computer lab and drew their landforms in KidPix.
	A second letter from Cyrus S. Quigley asked the students to create their own 51st state. The teacher modeled what features an imaginary state might have.
Cyrus S. Quigley visited the classrooms.
Students explained the most attractive features of their state in the hopes that their entry would be chosen for the 51st state .
They also gave a group presentation for Mr. Quigley and the other students in the class.
Samples of the brochures

Page created by Brooks Widmaier
January 31, 2003