December 2003  

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ATLAS ACTIVITIES

FOR SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH GRADES

Second Grade

Teachers will use the classroom sets of the Rand McNally Junior Classroom Atlas student editions for guided reading activities when working with text forms and features.

Teachers will regard the Rand McNally Junior Classroom Atlas notebook as a teacher resource, helpful for identifying questions about the atlas activities. Second Grade Teachers will not use the worksheets with second grade students.

Please do not purchase additional Rand McNally Junior Classroom Atlas notebooks for second grade. These notebooks can be regarded as a shared resource among Second Grade Teachers at each school. The notebooks can be kept in the library or shared informally among teachers.

The Curriculum Office will attempt to have local simplified county maps, city maps and maps which represent the attendance area of each school produced for second grade.

Third Grade  

Many of the activities in the Rand McNally Junior Classroom Atlas notebook are a good fit with third grade geography scope and sequence skills. Teachers should use the activities in the notebook or their own developed resources, as appropriate.

Specifically, the following activities from the Rand McNally Junior Classroom Atlas work with the third grade curriculum:

The sub-committee is requesting laminated desk maps for Whatcom County and the City of Bellingham in class sets with the county on one side and the city on the other. Since the bulk of the work in third grade focuses on local history, it would be great to have a variety of local maps.

The sub-committee is recommending that teachers collect currently available maps. For example, saving the local maps in phone books that are annually recycled.

Fourth Grade  

Many of the activities in the Rand McNally Junior Classroom Atlas notebook are a good fit with fourth grade geography scope and sequence skills. Teachers should use the activities in the notebook or their own developed resources, as appropriate. Since the fourth grade curriculum focuses mostly on Washington state, teachers can use a combination of activities from both the Junior Classroom Atlas and the Rand McNally State Studies, Your Washington notebook. Some of the activities from both resources link up well, going from big to small ( Junior Classroom Atlas to State Studies, Your Washington ). It is appropriate to use Activity 23: Geographical Terms and Activity 24: Symbols, Legend, and Compass Rose in both third and fourth grades.

Specifically, these activities work with the fourth grade curriculum: