Procedures

This unit will be divided into five, thirty minute segments for a third grade social studies class.


Day1: Activating prior knowledge and introducing each region
Students will be divided into five groups. Each group will become experts on a designated region. The students will be responsible for recording information depending on their "job" for each region of the United States (jobs include: climate, history, resources, physical characteristics, landmarks, etc.). Students will define climate, natural resource, geography, and region. Next, the group will be given an envelope with different characteristics describing their specified region. The students will look through the clues and as a group decide how each of the clues pertains to their region. They will then come up with a list of the states that are included in the region, using their maps. They will individually draw a picture that they think would be representative of an area in the region. Each group will post their pictures under the labeled section on a big bulletin board located in the classroom.
CREATE CHARACTERISTICS FOR EACH REGION

Day 2: Advertisements
The students will create an advertisement for their region. Each student will be responsible for researching the topic according to their "job." The students will use encyclopedias, this website  containing a lot of information broken into different categories for each region (http://www.dembsky.net/regions/), a united states atlas (http://www.nationalatlas.gov/), etc.  They will be persuading people to visit their region based on the characteristics of the region. For example, if their region is the Northeast, they could focus on skiing, snowboarding, mountains, the Capitol. The groups will make a poster advertising their region and present it to the class after everyone is finished. (Hang on bulletin board)

Day 3: Role Playing Around the U.S.
Each student picks a piece of paper out of a hat containing a region, and a "character". Without telling anyone what theirs says, they can research for 10 minutes using the above websites, their textbook, or the displayed advertisements from the previous days lesson, to get a better understanding of their character. The students will take turns coming up to the front acting out their character. The class will then guess who or what they are and what region they are from. Each student will only be allowed one guess per character and the person with the most correct will win a prize (for example, a piece of candy, a no homework pass, an eraser).At the end of the activity, the students will say who or what they were, and why they portrayed it the way they did. Props and costumes pieces (hats, scarves, sunglasses) can be provided for extra emphasis. Finally, the students will fill in a provided graphic organizer characterizing each of the regions
CREATE GRAPHIC ORGANIZER & SAMPLE. CREATE CHARACTER/REGION SHEETS

Day 4: Labeling the states and capitals
Pass out the lyrics (http://mrsjonesroom.com/songs/50capitals.html) and then show this animaniacs song with the states and capitals http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNUDDaEOvuY&feature=related. It is a very catchy way to remember the capitals. Have the students color in the map according to the region and label the states (http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/tlresources/aids/SocStudies/usmap.pdf). Discuss the resources that come from each region, including pictures .Encourage the students to choose a graphic of a resource that would help them remember each state while writing them on the map to help them remember (Florida=orange, Texas=gas can, North and South Dakota=farm).

Day 5: Artifact Bag
Bring in a bag of artifacts (4 for each region) and place 5 empty brown bags in the front of the class, each bag labeled with one of the regions. Hold up each artifact and ask students which bag they think it belongs in and why. Do this for all of the items. Then, have students write a paragraph about each region reflecting what they have learned throughout the unit.



Resources:
Fun game to learn states http://www.pibmug.com/files/map_test.swf