Trick Geography

quick what's the capital of Delaware used to know all the states and capitals and if you've recently taught geography you probably know the answer sadly we often forget our geography and is it because the emphasis is often on memorizing I'm Sarah one of the curriculum consultants and want to show you clever program to teach kids geography they won't forget trick geography uses visual cues mnemonic phrases and special trick words to help you recall the shape of States country's capitals even rivers and mountains sounds effective right it gets better because trick geography is also easy to teach the courses are designed for students from about third grade to middle school age but if you have an older kiddo who's struggling with geography the books are not babyish looking at all so let them have go you can teach to all three learning modalities with this one program visual learners will enjoy the pictures but so will right brain learners auditory kids will appreciate the silly phrases even kinesthetic students will enjoy the connection to real-life objects like we're calling facts about Pennsylvania when they pick up pencil or sing the shape of Maine in chicken nugget each lesson requires student book and teacher guide the teacher book is needed for the course as all of the instruction is in there the student book is where each child will respond and these are not reproducible so you'll need one per student keep them and use them as reference tool in all of the books you're first studying the states or countries followed by the capitals than the physical features you can typically do one or two maps per week for elementary and two to three per week for middle grades for the USA course this schedule would take you about seven weeks for the youngers and five weeks for the older students that said it's flexible program and you can work it as needed for example if you're adding geography to history study you may only do one map week likewise if you're adding geography to unit study you might do map daily but this is where the focused courses can be really fun build study around geography learn the foods cultures products languages along with the lay of the land choose from the USA or world courses or take continental approach with Africa Asia Europe or the Americas with Oceania Asia and Europe are each six to eight-week courses the Americas and Oceania are in one book can take 8 to 12 weeks Africa is 5 to 7 if you do the world expect it to take basically school year let's take look at lesson from the USA book the states are grouped by north east south east north central south central north west and south west you'll see regional clusters used in the countries as well the first three maps are part of the Northeast group Pennsylvania New York and Vermont anywhere between one and three maps week is the expectation but you do what works for you this is where the teacher guide is your best friend the work is done for you all you have to do is deliver the information to your eager students and I'm not kidding about the eager part the kids will want to see what comes next they may even make their own memory tricks the style of learning could spill over in other subject areas let's look at the southeastern states when teaching the state's students see two page layout one page has an outline map of the US with the region shaded in giving context to the location the other page is an enlarged map of the region within each state you see dotted outline of an object that corresponds either phonetically or by association with that state beside each state is aligned to write the trick memory words teachers have reduced version of the student pages and will follow the step-by-step instructions in the guide as the students work in their books the example for this region is Mississippi read the description of the trick object as your students connect the dots on their bottom map in this case the description is missing sippy which students then write in the blank next to the state the image is an upside down sippy cup students do this for each state in the region and you'll review the states and say the trick words missing sippy Mississippi students then identify each state in the at the top each region has guide page as seen here only one region is given as an example which is fine once you get the hang of it teaching lesson is piece of cake follow the same process when teaching the Capitals again the teacher guide shows you exactly what to say to teach the lesson often the pictures are silly but that just makes kids remember them better even if the sentence is not logical to you it's gonna work you may even come up with more ways to remember the states and capitals how fun images are all in black and white your artsy students can color them in while other students may prefer the simplicity once you try trick geography you'll gain so much insight why memorizing capitals just doesn't stick between the pictures the word associations the keywords and coloring the maps it's multi-sensory way to learn geography and with all that input comes retention if you have questions about trick geography or other curriculum contact our consulting team by phone email or online chat you