Friday, June 17, 2016

Teaching Araling Panlipunan isn't complete without the basic knowledge about GEOGRAPHY . So my first official lesson for this school year is about the basic concept of Geography, the study of land, its features, inhabitants and the phenomena of earth (The American Heritage Dictionary/ of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company. Retrieved October 9, 2006.).

My first formal lesson both with my seventh and eighth grader was about the basic concepts of Geography. I started with daily routine; I called a student to lead the prayer, asked them to inspect their surroundings and arrange their chairs. Then, to create a happy atmosphere, I asked them to choose a partner and I let them sing "Kumusta Ka?", a popular children's song.

To formally start the lesson, we started by brainstorming. I asked them what they knew about geography. And because I gave them their first assignment for this school year, everything went smoothly. I also requested them to bring out their notebooks and maps (Asian and World Map for seventh and eighth grader, respectively. I asked them to observe the difference between a globe (that I band a map, and which one they prefer using. Some of them chose a globe over a map, to which I jokingly replied , "O sige ha, 'yang mga nagtaas ng kamay, magdala kayo ng globe next meeting". Nagtawanan naman ang mga batang makukulit.

Last year, I received a complaint from a Science teacher who taught Earth Science for seventh grade on the last quarter of the school year. She told me that most seventh grade students whom she handled could not distinguish latitude from longitude and other important lines on the map. In this lesson, one of my objectives is for the students to be able to distinguish the important lines on the globe and on the map, and to appreciate its importance. I made sure that the students were able to identify the following:
latitude
longitude
grid
Prime Meridian
International Date Line
Arctic Circle
Tropic of Cancer
Equator
Tropic of Capricorn
Antarctic Circle

In addition, I also taught them about North Pole and South Pole and the earth's east and west hemisphere.


For further exercise, I tell a name of a country. The students would find the said country on their own map and identify the name of the line where the country is located. Then I will call two students to locate the said country on the map and on the globe respectively.

I hope this lesson would help the students to remember the important lines on the map/globe.