CH-UH's Canterbury 5th Graders Take Off Shoes to Explore World
It 
can be hard for elementary students to grasp how big the world really is when all they have as a reference point is a map of the continents hanging on their classroom wall. Canterbury’s 5th grade team of Kellie Dillow, Monica Lewis, and Joe Lipowski worked hard to make this big world feel a little more familiar to their students.Focusing on both social studies and English language arts skills, they began by studying cultures using stories and readings from their Wonder ELA series. Each student then selected a culture from fourteen options offered by their teachers, which they researched and presented by creating a slide show.Some of the cultures represented groups of people (the Yourba), some came from cities (Buenos Aries), and others reflected entire countries (Belgium). The teachers carefully selected cultures from all over the globe, including several from Africa and South America. Each student created a slide show that highlighted customs, traditions, geography, people, foods, and holidays, and included four or five questions at the end for their classmates to answer. “The kids really had to pay attention to the presentations!” said Ms. Lewis.One of the most exciting parts of the project was using two giant maps that Canterbury borrowed from the district. With the maps laid out on the gym floor, students were able to find the location of the culture they studied and point it out to their classmates identifying its latitude and longitude, hemisphere, and reference to the equator and prime meridian.
Students also found cities and towns alongside bodies of water, discussing why people would opt to settle in such a location as opposed to “in the middle of nowhere.” They were able to physically follow the path of a river as it combined with others and eventually emptied into a larger body of water. “The kids just loved it,” said Ms. Lewis who heard from parents how much students were talking about the project at home. “Once they saw those maps, they took off.” 