The 7th grade at my school has been starting their USA unit, which means I've been in a LOT of 7th grade classes these past couple weeks. This is a simple lesson, but it's been a lot of fun!
We start by making a mind map (I've come to love a good mind map this year) of anything and everything that the students think of when they think of the USA. The picture on the right is what a typical USA mind map has looked like in my classes. Those are all actual responses I've gotten. (Justin Bieber gets a question mark because he's canadian)Then we go to the book (which I'm sorry I can't scan, but this part is easily adapted by just picking photos yourself and writing captions to go with them). Where they have to match the photos with the corresponding captions. We do this together as a class.
After they've matched all the captions to the photos in the book, I ask them to pick a word from our mind map that we made at the beginning. They can pick any word they want, and they have to draw a picture of this word (or what it makes them think of) and write at least 3 sentences explaining why they drew what they drew.
I like to save about 10 minutes at the end of class and go through the drawings and have them read their sentences out loud. I've found the best way to do this is ask "who drew a picture of ?" then they all hold up their pics and one kid reads theirs. This is the most effective way to avoid having 10 pictures of the Hollywood sign read.
Like I said, simple, but the kids really seem to enjoy the chance to be a little creative and it's also been enjoyable for me, because you get something new every time!
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