Title: A Musical Trip Across New Hampshire#119

National Standard: 1 How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.

State Standard: 10

Teaching Level: E

Lesson Introduction: Music is one way to help people remember things. This lesson is intended to help students locate the best or most familiar route to a destination and aid them in remembering how to get there.

Objectives/Purpose: Students will use maps and personal knowledge to determine the best route to a destination. Students will communicate these directions to others in the form of a song.

Materials: State maps.

Procedure:
1)Explain to students that they are going to plan the route from the school to Manchester. They need to include direction, route numbers, and landmarks that will be seen along the way.

2)Students will be asked to present their directions to the group by singing their directions to a simple tune like Jingle Bells, Baa-Baa Black Sheep, or Clementine.

3)An example would be:

In my car, on 106,
Heading south to the traffic lights.
There's the farm and the Lobster Pool
I'm turning now to 395

These directions can be sung to Clementine, with a bit of creative slurring.

4)Ask students to now determine a destination of their own choosing to be sung to the class. The class should try to determine the destination by following along using their maps.

Evaluation/Assessment: Students have correctly given directions to a destination using maps and personal knowledge to determine the best routes, direction, and landmarks.

Extension/Enrichment: Have students map the way to a location on the school grounds and create singing directions. Ask them to share their singing directions with other students. The students can evaluate how well they gave directions if the other student found the designated location.

Reflection: How successful was this lesson? Did all students benefit? Were there any surprises? What might you do differently another time? Please note any changes that will make this lesson more effective and useful in the future and pass them along to the NHGA. We appreciate your comments.
Thank you.
The authors.

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Original file name: 119rtf - converted on Tuesday, 20 October 1998, 20:55