October 23, 2012. This was my second lesson. This was about the geography of land such as lakes,rivers,oceans, deserts, mountains, valleys and plains. This was my lesson where I was being evaluated by my professor.

I started out by playing the geography song from a CD. My students followed along with a handout I gave them.After the song was played I began asking my students if they knew what some of these items were. Most of them knew the big items like Mountains and rivers, but most of them did not know what a valley was or a plain. I brought in some outside knowledge that was not from the lesson guide. I explained how the St Joe river flowed from Ohio, through Indiana, then into Michigan and how it dumps into Lake Michigan. I then gave an example of a desert in South America of how it is so hot and how it never rains.

I also asked students how lakes, rivers, and mountains are formed and I had varying answers. I explained how these items were formed over long periods of time such as continents colliding with each other to form mountains, how lakes were formed by melted glaciers and how rivers are formed from melting ice flowing down mountain sides. One of my questions was "how do rivers form"? And the most perfect answer I got was "however they want". When my student said that I told him he is absolutely correct. It is the most basic in answers and absolutely correct. Think about it. Water flows in the path of least resistance and where ever water wants to go it's going to go. So if water goes where it wants then rivers form how ever they want. It was such an unexpected answer that I couldn't think of anything to say but, "you are absolutely correct".

To keep the lesson going I had the students play a spinner game. What ever land feature the spinner landed on my students had to put a chip on that feature on a map.

I closed the lesson by reviewing each of the vocabulary words, explaining how land features were formed and having the students give me examples of what they learned.

Thanks "S" for such a great answer.