Elementary School Best Practices

The following was submitted by Stephanie Santora, Grade 4 Teacher

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1) Make up a rap song incorporating any SOL

2) Flip Book – Revolutionary War, Civil War, etc

3) Tridramas – Native American Groups, Name of Group – language spoken – location of group

4) Interactive Velcro Wall Map – to identify regions, waterways, products, industries, Native American language groups, etc

5) Make Up a Play

The following was submitted by Delores B Oliver, Churchland Academy Elementary

Grade Four, SOL 2-10

Target: Writing Play for the VA SOLs

-  Students work in groups:

o One group write the words for the play

o One group to make the costumes

o One group to do scenery and props

Objective: Students learn more when they become active participants

The following was submitted by Norman Colpitts, Park View Elementary School VS.7b, Major Battles in Civil War

Battle of the Iron Clads (Nauticus Exercise)

- Primary source eye witness accounts to be read by students

- Divide class and assign to specific boats involved in battle

- Tables are used as props/boats-battering

- Paper balls are used as cannon balls

- The class is laid out like Hampton roads harbor

- Tables/boats are pushed into position on command and cannons are fired (kids love this part!)

- Some boats are set on fire with red paper

- Every boat has a big picture on it of what it represents

- Discussion to follow

The following was submitted by Michelle Kirkpatrick, Churchland Academy Elementary School

Grade Five Activities

USI 2.a – 2.c, 3a – 3b.

Progressive Activity:

1. Use blank map of world to label with continents and oceans

2. draw lines showing division into regions and color code with key

3. use blue to label US waterways

Use clip are pictures to cut and paste natural resources, Native Americans, shelter, clothing and food onto map for location of tribes

Final Project will have first few SOLs and provide review project for benchmark

USI.5 Colonial America

Create a brochure advertising one of the three regions and use SOL criteria and key words, convince settlers to move to your region!

USI.4 EXPLORERS

Create a poster contest for “Who was the best explorer!”

The following was submitted by Malinda Connell, Churchland Elementary, Grade Six

US1 2a-12b

Students were randomly assigned an SOL. They were to create a powerpoint teaching this SOL, they will ultimately present to the entire class. A rubric was provided to students noting editorial content and presentation requirements. This was great review for SOLs and the students seemed to enjoy the challenge of the assignment, and sharing their finished products.

The following was submitted by Donna Rowley, Grade Six, Elementary

SOL, USI 9

- Civil War Flip Books: People, battle sites, causes

- Dressed Up as various SOL figures and told their story – classes had to guess who the person was – plays written by students

- Hands on activities, made maps of colonies using dough

The following was submitted by Kevin Jones

“I used the activity suggested by the Portsmouth Children’s Museum. I got a bed sheet and recreated a large regional map of VA. I made labels that included the regions, waterways, major cities and products and industries that had the children place the labels on the appropriate place on the map. Great resource for teaching and reviewing geography of VA.”

The following was submitted by Brian Lieberman, Westhaven Elementary, Portsmouth

Students created “help wanted” ads to attract potential sailors, settlers, or adventurists for Christopher Columbus, The Virginia Company, Puritans, Pilgrims, Georgia (debtors) and Quakers!

The following was submitted by Beverly Cumbo – Ghent School USI5.b

Writing – Research, one of the 13 colonies

- TSW be given certain criteria, questions that must be included in report of their colony

- TSW have to use resources to gather information

- TSW model how to format their information using the writing process

- TSW create art/some type of model (3D) that is significant to their colony

[what is TSW???]