Dancing About Geography

(This reminds me of a favorite movie quote from Playing By Heart: "Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.")

I had some fun with this one. My kids have this big all-district writing assessment coming up next week, and due to the two days of inservice this week, they were going to end up with two straight weeks of language arts and no social studies. So I decided to use the 3 days this week to work through some geography terms and definitions. We took notes today, and then I assigned them each to come up with a creative representation for one of the terms. First, though, we had to talk about what a "creative representation" is. It's a funny thing to talk about with seventh graders... They got the obvious ones, of course, like making up a skit or drawing a picture, but they had a harder time coming up with others. I loved watching their faces when they suggested something they thought was wild and out of the realm of possibility... and then their shock when I said yes to their answers. "A song?" "Yes!" "A rap?" "Yes!" "A poem?" "Yes!" "A poster?" "A sketch?" "A story?" "Yes, yes, yes!" And so they began to plan. They schemed and talked and practiced and drew and generally had a great time figuring out how to teach their classmates to remember their chosen geography terms. I'm so excited to see the results later this week. My favorite answer was an interpretive dance. I really hope someone decides to do a dance interpretation of the Prime Meridian...