One of my favorite units to teach is our landforms unit.
It's always a highlight for me and
a whole lot of fun for my class!
My class gets excited when I change out our reference wall.
They know something new is headed their way!
We read lots of informational books about landforms.
These are a few of the ones I've collected and use each year.
I was pretty excited when I found this set this year!
We identified and defined many different landforms
then categorized them as land or water features.
We used Crayola Air Dry Clay to make imaginary
islands with at least three landforms and a story to tell.
(More on that in a minute.)
Our dry erase markers made great rolling pins!
I gave each student a chunk of clay about the size of
a lemon and a good, sturdy Chinet paper plate.
I've used styrofoam plates in the past
but these work the best. Plus, the kids can paint
around the edges of the plate to create an ocean
without the paint flaking off once it dries.
Guess what? Almost every single island had a cave or an
ACTIVE volcano! Oh, the allure of hot lava to a seven year old!
Next, we painted our landform islands and decided in what
ocean and near which continent they would be located.
We recently learned all about maps and put those map skills
to work by drawing maps of our islands complete with a
compass rose and map key.
I pulled up one of my favorite PowerPoints from
Teacher's Clubhouse as a reference.
This is a map in progress of "Rainbow City"!
Students used this prewriting page to brainstorm and decide on
the location, landforms, weather, jobs, and
special features of their islands.
They then wrote postcards home to Mon and Dad from their
imaginary islands.
We glued all of our writing and map inside a construction paper
folder with the postcard on the front.
In our literacy centers we read and wrote about landforms,
played landforms partner games, and worked further
with vocabulary.
Geography Jabber was a big hit! Students worked in pairs to spin
a landform, determine if it was a land or water feature, then
tell their partner everything they know about the landform.
We used our landforms reference charts as a reference while
making vocabulary booklets.
On the last day of our unit I assessed everybody with this
landforms assessment. My class loved all the pictures and
begged to color them!
We finished our projects just in time for conference week.
Every single parent told me how excited their child was for
them to see their islands and read their writing.
I love when that happens!
If you'd like to do this landforms project with your class you can!
Click this link or any of the pictures to take you right to it
in my TPT shop. I just updated the file and added these
bulletin board display pieces too!
See more about our landforms writing project in this post!
Happy landform building friends!
This post contains Amazon affiliate links to books I use in my classroom.
There is no added cost to you for using these links.
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