National Geographic Kids Countries Pictures

[Hilda Dixon]

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/countries/

 

I will recommend the National Geographic kids countries website because this website displays very unique picturesque pictures that describe each country vividly. There is a slogan that says that a picture is worth a thousand words. A good picture could definitely be a good vehicle to initiative inquisitive conversations.

Within the LAUSD office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education Department has created  Conversational Skills lesson plans that help English language learners expand their expressive language. The goal is that students independently build up ideas (knowledge, agreement, solution) by using these conversational cards. During these conversational practices, students learn to take turns and need to follow scripted sentence starters. Each conversational card task has it set of sentences starters.  An essential initial part of the lesson is to display a picture so that elementary students can start a conversation between them by referencing their ideas on the picture displayed. The process is divided in four phases: Create, Clarify, Negotiate and Fortify.  Every task comes with its own prompt starters and prompt responses. The idea behind these practices is that students eventually will internalize these skills so that they would express them in their writing. For instance, for the Create Task Card, Kindergarten students can start their conversation by asking to their elbow partners, “What do you notice…? ,  appropriate responses would be, “I noticed that….,” “It reminds me of…,” “Another idea would be …..,” and “I think….”

For the Clarify Task Card prompts are as follow: “I want to add…,”  “Can you explain…,” “In other words,…” “I think it means…”

The Negotiate Task Card prompts are as follow” “My evidence is …,” “our conclusion is…,” “My opinion is …,””I agree/disagree because…”

The Fortify Task Card prompts are as follow: “we can conclude…,” “The best evidence is…,”  “An example from the picture is..”

 

[Esther Dupree]

Thank you for sharing this resource!  My students really thrive with sentence starters.  My students love learning about geography and nature all around the world and this will be a great way of teaching them how to connect some vocabular skills while learning more about other places.  National Geographic is such an important educational resource because of the deeply meaningful images and stories behind those images.  The images we see influence our focus and our world view and how someone is represented, which helps determine who we become.  Especially in a time when we cannot travel to different places to enrich our learning, we need to find more meaningful ways of incorporating online resources.

This will be a great resource to connect learned phrases with the content of geographical features in East Asia.  The first time I planned a pretend trip with my students using AirBNB and other internet resources, one of my students freaked out because he thought he wasn't going to be able to sleep in his own bed that night.  It is difficult sometimes for me to convey to students that places exist outside of their own worlds and that we can learn about them without having to go there.  This will be another key resource in my being able to bridge the gaps for them from their community to communities and cultures and countries around the world.

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