[blairslug]

I teach 3rd grade and am starting with a new theme this year on travel. I'd love to hear any ideas out there people have used before.

I'm thinking of doing a few things already:
-Passports for each student
-Travel cash to purchase "travel activities"
-Bulletin board that says "Road Trip to Reading Workshop"
-Table groups with names of continents
-World map posted (not sure what to do with this yet)
-Travel to outerspace, when we get to that unit in science
-Photo board called "Travel through learning scrapbook" -Maybe???

Has anyone done this before or have extra ideas they can add to this?

THANKS SO MUCH!

[5/6Teach]

I'm doing the same thing, and here are some things I've come up with. (A lot of the ideas are from other teachers on proteacher!)

I teach sixth grade and this will be my second year of doing the Amazing Race. I put up a clue about a country each week, and the students submit their guesses. (They can use the internet.) Whoever guesses the country correctly gets a stamp for the country in their "passport." I made the passports with sheets of foam, cut and folded in half to be the size of a regular passport. I then put 3x5 notecards in them and used brads to hold it all together.

I have a world map on one bulletin board that reads "Reading Takes You Places!" When a student reads a book (fiction or nonfiction) about a different country, they will give me a short summary. They can then put a pushpin in the map on the country.

The bulletin board outside my room says "Welcome" and then has the word welcome in many different languages.

For my students' locker tags, I used the internet to translate each name into a different language. The sign above their lockers says "Around the World in _______ Days."

For their desk name tags, I used panoramic photos (noncopyrighted, on the internet) and typed their names on them.

There's a sign above my desk that says "Visitor's Center."

My reading area with comfortable chairs is called "Rest Area."

My students will post their Hopes and Dreams on cut-out airplanes (from Archivers, a scrapbook store). The title will read "We're Soaring to New Heights."

I found photos of school lunches around the world and will post them for the first few weeks of school. I'm currently looking for school rules from different countries.

I'm planning on using the phrases "Frequent Flier Club," but I'm not sure how I'll use it yet.

If you do a Student of the Week, you could name them Explorer of the Week.

At the end of the year I will put up a bulletin board that says "We're on the way to middle school" and has a road with cars.

Under the title on my newsletter it says "The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step."

I'm thinking of creating a quote wall that I read about on proteacher. The students can put up their own quotes (that inspire them). I'm planning on starting with quotes about traveling and expanding your mind/horizons.

[wisteacher]

I used state maps to cover my main bulletin board, ordered reading road signs to place around my room and made license plates for desk nametags (acme.com)

Cruise on in to ___ grade!
Let the adventure begin
License to learn
Exploring new roads in ___ grade
On the road to learning
Traveling the ___ grade highway
Highways to adventure
All roads lead to learning
Traveling across (state/country) in ___ grade
Learning can take you anywhere
Cruising through (state/country) history
On the road to ___ grade

[TMom]

I am trying to put together a theme for traveling as well, so thanks for the ideas. I was wondering where you could get a template for making a passport?

I am getting a world map, since I teach bilingual and most are Mexican American, most will know most about Oregon and Mexico. We can study those briefly together and write a class report. Then they can find their own place to become and expert. We can find authors from different places, etc. We will mark those on the map.

Keep the ideas going...

[mrspat]

I did a travel theme a few years ago. I was teaching middle school language arts at the time. I got a large world map and used that as a reference for our stories. The title was "Where in the World is _______ class?" and I would put pushpins in the places where our stories took place. I also did a smaller bulletin board focusing on a different countries literature that rotated each month. For background paper on some of my bulletin boards I found some Cars movie contact paper at a dollar store but probably any car/road trip theme would work. This year as a librarian I read a Junie B. Jones book to the first grade where she talks about how the teacher would teach them about different countries. They had passports as you suggested and everytime they would begin to study about the country the teacher had a student as a "pilot" and he would turn the lights off and on and the students would pretend they were on their way to whatever country. It sounded like a cute idea that I think would still work in 3rd grade. Oh, in my classroom, I also used some toy cars and orange desktop traffic cones I found as accents.

[TMom]

Also, if anyone has any pictures, that would be great to see.

[blairslug]

These are some GREAT ideas. Thanks everyone for your input! I head into my classroom today to get started, and this will be really helpful.

[ladykeke20]

I never knew how much ideas you could gather with a theme such as this...very creative PTers!!