Travel Pals: A Journey For Learning

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Students refine their map, geography, reading, writing, and presentation skills and increase their technology skills by engaging in Internet research, navigating website and using digital cameras. Students collaborate to create scrapbooks of information to be sent out with the Travel Pal as they explore the U.S. As email and postcard information about the Travel Pal's journey is received, students track where the Travel Pal's have been and what they've seen. The project culminates with a completed scrapbook and a bag full of souvenirs from the Travel Pal's trips that students use to complete a final presentation.

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OBJECTIVE
Students will:

• Contribute to a class made scrapbook about themselves, their school and community
• Operate and download photos from a digital camera and use iPhoto so they can help to crop and choose pictures for the class scrapbook
• Learn how to access and respond to email
• Use the internet to research and report on cities, famous sites and places
• Learn how to navigate Google Earth and Google Maps to observe the places that the Travel Pal visits
• Illustrate books, brochures, posters, poems, stories and more
• Use map skills to keep track of places their Travel Pal has been,
• Recall the location of states and cities on the U.S. map
• Write narratives, letters and informational posters during activities related to the adventures of their Travel Pal

LESSONS FOR THIS UNIT
Lesson 1: Getting Ready
Lesson 2: Introducing the Travel Pals & The Travel Pal Interactive Notebook
Lesson 3: Creating the Travel Pal Scrapbook
Lesson 4: The Travel Pals Journey
Lesson 5: Home Sweet Home

REPRODUCIBLES
Email Introducing Travel Pal Project (PDF)
Travel Pal Biography Examples (PDF)
Travel Pal Blank Biography (PDF)
Caretaker Information for Scrapbook (PDF)
Scrapbook Page 1 (PDF)
Scrapbook Page 2 (PDF)

CULMINATING ACTIVITY

I let the Travel Pals spend a night with each of my students upon their arrival back to Austin. That way each student has an opportunity to share all of their adventures and what they had been learning with their family.

SUPPORTING BOOKS

Any of these books listed would be excellent references to extend the activities completed throughout this project.

• The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller
• The Scrambled States of America Talent Show by Laurie Keller
• This Land is Your Land by Kathy Jakobsen, Woody Guthrie, illustrated by Kathy Jakobsen
• My America by Jan Spivey Gilchrist
• Tour America by Johnson Siebert, Diane Siebert, illustrated by Stephen T. Johnson
• United States of America by Jeff E. Reynolds
• Discover the United States of America by Lara Rice Bergen
• Scholastic Atlas of the United States by David Rubel
• United States of America: A State by State Guide by Millie Miller and Cyndi Nelson
• Series Rookie Read About Geography by various authors

Jennifer Atkinson teaches first grade in Austin, TX and is a 2008-09 Teacher Advisor for grades 1-2. She is Time Warner Cable's 2006-07 National Teacher of the Year and the recipient of other national teaching awards.

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