Landforms (Accidentes Geograficos) Unit!

This past week we began working on our landforms unit, which aligns to our Kindergarten Geography standards. Our landforms unit ties in nicely with our Gingerbread man/maps/globes theme for the month of December. I was extra excited about this unit because while there aren't many (or actually almost NONE) Gingerbread man books/stories in Spanish, there are a good amount of informational texts about landforms/biomes in Spanish as well as fictional texts in Spanish that feature beautiful landscapes that can create conversations about landforms!

We launched the unit with a SQA (Lo que se, lo que quiero saber, lo que aprendi) chart about accidentes geograficos! We learned hand motions for several landforms including: mountain, island, ocean, river, desert, glacier, peninsula, waterfall, volcano and hills. The hand motions were simple and the kids really enjoyed showing them and "acting" them out! The English side teacher and I both made sure to have the same motions so that there was no confusion! We also did a T-Chart categorizing land formation and water formations. Students grabbed a card, showed it to the class and then categorized it where they thought it went on the chart. 

For the first week of this unit, I incorporated a "Social Studies" center during our Learning Center Rotations. The center involved having students use green & blue paint dabbers to fill in a circular world map and then write on a piece of paper and attach "Mi mundo es bello." I wanted to include a simple center that could further help students distinguish between 'tierra' and 'oceano' by using the colors on the globe. When students finished this center, they could work together on the bilingual map of the United States puzzle!

We also played a quick game using our small inflatable globe before heading to our Special on Tuesday. We sat in a circle on the rug and we threw the globe in boy/girl order and wherever your hand landed, you would either say tierra or oceano (land or ocean). This quick game was fun and helped practice these vocabulary words for the landform unit in Spanish!

On Thursday we reviewed our landform hand motions and then engaged in a fun project where students created a landform in a collaborative group of 3-4 students each. The students had to choose a landform from a box but had to make sure not to show it to any other group. Then, they went off, gathered the materials they needed from the materials table and then began creating their landform. I walked around asking students what they were cutting/making and why they were including that and also encouraged them to think about other things they could include in their creation. After students worked, they came back to the rug and each group presented their landform to the class. The class had to try and guess what the landform was. The students loved presenting and the rest of the class loved guessing! This was also great to get them talking and saying orally the landform names in Spanish. Here are some pictures of the students presenting their landforms to the class and of our finished bulletin board!

If you're interested in this unit and looking for materials in Spanish, check out my teacherspayteachers landforms unit product by clicking HERE!