Globe+Strategy

III People, Places, and Environments IX Global Connections Globes have the advantage over maps in their ability to show the size and shape of an area exactly as they appear on the earth's surface. Second-grade students can use a globe to help track the migration of families to the United States. Using their fingers on the surface of the globe, they trace families that came across the Bering Straits and from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Central America. Students can ask questions about why families came to America. They need to look at forces that were pushing families out of their homelands and forces that were attracting their families to America. They evaluate which would have been hardest: leaving home, making the trip to America, or starting a new life in America? Students can create their own globes by blowing up a balloon, covering it with papier-mache, painting it blue, cutting out paper continents, and labeling the oceans. Elementary students find the interrelationships between the continents challenging when they must move from the twodimensional surface of a map to the three-dimensional surface of a sphere (Fisher & Binns, 2000). Using their finished globes, students can study continents, oceans, directions, latitude, longitude, poles, and climate zones as well as the relationships between places and the people who inhabit them. Because they create their own models, students do not depend on the interpretation of others. Younger students might focus on the ratio of water to land, and older students might develop a color-coded globe key. • To illustrate the fact that three-fourtl1s of the earth is comprised of water, have students form a circle and toss an inflatable globe from person to person, noting how often they catch the globe where oceans are marked. • Cover the floor with a large drop cloth. Cover work surfaces with newspaper. • Mix cellulose wallpaper paste in a large bucket with twice the amount of water suggested in the directions. Stir this mixture; let it set for 15 to 20 minutes. • Have each student blow up a balloon and attach his or her name to the knot end. • Direct students to tear newspapers into strips, dip each strip in the wallpaper paste, remove any extra paste, and cover their balloon in one coat of newspaper. Mter allowing the coat to dry overnight, have the students repeat the process until the balloon is coated with six layers. Use paper towel on the last layer for a smoother finish. • Provide overhead transparencies for students to use in creating continents. Have students trace the continents onto the transparencies and then transfer the image to white paper or colored paper. Have them neatly print the name of each continent in ink. Students can prepare their continents by using different map projections, including the Robinson projection, which is considered by many experts to,be tlle most accurate in terms ofland mass distribution. • Have students create labels for the oceans. • When the globes are dry, have students use blue tempera paint to cover the surface. Then have them use liquid school glue to adhere the paper continents to tlle earth's surface. Make small cuts in tlle continents from the edges toward the center and add more glue for more secure adhesion. Check each student's globe for accuracy before the glue hardens; relationships between continents on a sphere compared to a wall or book map will be difficult for some students to discern. • Finally, have students attach ocean labels to their globe. • As an alternative, students can create a globe by using yarn soaked in liquid starch to wrap around the surface of a balloon. When the starch dries and the students pop the balloon, a stiff yarn shell remains. Students can glue continents onto the globe's surface. These globes ari more fragile than those made of papier-mache but are much faster to construct and to dry. TIllS is also an easier globe-making method for younger students. Students get the same practice in looking for the relationships between land masses and water. Some of Dr. Morris's third-graders ask why they had to cut their continents to get them to fit on the globe. Dr. Morris uses those questions to extend the original globe-making lesson. He cuts old, red rubber playground balls that have gone flat over time into hemispheres. Each student receives a hemisphere with directions to flatten it on his or her desk. As hard as they try, the third graders cannot get the hemispheres to flatten out. Several enterprising students do figure out they can try to stretch the ball. At that teachable moment, everyone gets to talk about what happens to the brand name on the sides of the old playground balls when they stretch, and the youngsters come to understand why Greenland and Antarctica look larger than South America on some maps. With tlle fmished globes, the third-grade students are able to play "Dr. Morris Says." Each student stands at his or her desk with his or her globe. Dr. Morris gives directions: "Dr. Morris says, move to Mrica," and the students all move their fingers to Mrica. Because they are standing next to their desks, Dr. Morris can quickly see who needs more help and who is doing well. Students are able to locate the continents, oceans, poles, circles, tropics, hemispheres, and tlle equator. If they move to the nortll, south, east, or west from a continent, Dr. Morris asks them to name the next feature: "Dr. Morris says, What ocean is west of Mrica?" and students move their fingers in that direction. If Dr. Morris issues a directive without using his name (e.g., "Move to the Indian Ocean"), students who move are out and must sit down, but they follow along on the globe. When the fifth "out" sits down, the first "out" can stand up again. The game is challenging, but every student is still participating. Fifth-grade students have a globe in front of them, and the teacher has a CD-ROM of geographic features projected on the front wall. The students quickly spin the globe to the place where they locate the mystery feature: It can be a sea, peninsula, bay, coastline, river, mountain range, or island. It can also be a political feature such as a nation or a state. Finally, it can be a monumental feature such as the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids in Egypt, the Great Wall, Taos Pueblo, or the Vatican. Students learn both places and locations from working with the globe. Fifth-grade students trace the triangle trades with their fingers: to New England for rum, to Mrica for slaves, to the West Indies for molasses, and back to port. In another trade triangle, students trace New England wheat, lumber, horses, and fish to the West Indies for bills of exchange, to Europe for manufactured goods, and back again to port. With every transaction, the captain of the ship made a profit. If you sold molasses for rum as part of the triangle trade, would you be involved in the slave trade? If you first conducted business on one triangle trade route, then the other, and then back to the first, would you consider yourself the captain of a slave ship or a businessman? If, as a ship's captain, you did not earn money from the triangle trade, how would you get the money you needed to feed your family? There were other ways a ship captain could make money but not as quickly. 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