September · Week 1 · Day 2 · School day 2

Day 2: Reading the Map

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🏁 Play with your child: Rate Race

The day, step by step

1. 10–15 min Morning meeting SL.7.1

   1. Calendar and agenda: a student reads today's blocks aloud and names the game for device time.
   2. Question of the day: What is one thing a map can show you that a photograph cannot? Think for 30 seconds, talk with a partner, then two volunteers share out.
   3. Fluency warm-up: partners read the 10 word study words to each other twice, timing the second read and trying to beat the first.

2. 15–20 min Word study L.7.4b

   1. Quick review: cover the roots chart and have students write geo and graph meanings from memory.
   2. Word building chain on the board: graph → autograph → autobiography → biographer. Ask what each added part means (auto = self, bio = life, -er = one who).
   3. Partners define three list words without a dictionary using roots, then check in the dictionary. Record any surprises (geothermal = heat from inside the earth).
   4. Analogy practice: geology is to earth as biology is to ____ (life). Students write two analogies of their own.

3. 25–30 min Reading workshop RL.7.3

   Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (Wonderscape Library)

   1. Independent reading 10 minutes; students add a log entry.
   2. Read-aloud: continue with the wager scene. Chart Fogg's traits (precise, calm, confident) and beside each write the evidence from the text that proves it.
   3. Mini-lesson: a trait is a word for how someone usually acts; evidence is what the author shows. Students pick one trait of Passepartout and find one piece of evidence.
   4. Turn and talk: how does the setting (Victorian London, trains and steamships) make this journey possible? Would the story work today?

4. 35–45 min Math 7.RP.1

   1. Warm-up: a train goes 180 miles in 3 hours. How far in 1 hour? Students explain how they know (180 ÷ 3 = 60).
   2. Define rate (a ratio of two different units, like miles and hours) and unit rate (the amount for exactly one of the second unit). Record examples: 60 miles per hour, $4 per pound, 25 pages per day.
   3. Guided practice: 240 words typed in 5 minutes (48 words per minute); 36 cookies for 9 people (4 cookies per person); $12 for 8 pencils ($1.50 each); 350 miles on 14 gallons (25 miles per gallon).
   4. Partner problem: Fogg's ship covers 1,200 miles in 4 days. How many miles per day? (300) At that rate, how many days for 2,100 miles? (7)

   Math center: rate race (flip a card with a rate like 96 miles in 4 hours; first partner to write the correct unit rate wins the card)

5. 25–30 min Social studies C3 D2.Geo.1.6-8

   1. Display three maps of the same region: political (borders and cities), physical (mountains, rivers) and thematic (rainfall or population). Ask what each one is good for.
   2. Review the parts of a map: title, legend or key, compass rose, scale bar, grid. Students find each on a classroom map and label a blank map outline with all five.
   3. Scale practice: if 1 inch equals 200 miles and two cities are 3.5 inches apart on the map, how far apart are they? (700 miles) Students measure two distances on the classroom map with a ruler.
   4. Exit: name one question you could answer with a physical map but not a political map.

6. 25–30 min Writing W.7.3a

   1. Mini-lesson: a strong narrative opens in a moment, not with 'One day.' Show two openers: 'I spent a lot of time at my grandma's house' versus 'The screen door slapped shut behind me and the smell of onions hit first.' Ask which one puts the reader there.
   2. Students write their opening sentence three different ways and circle the strongest.
   3. Draft for 15 minutes about the starred memory from the Map of Me. Goal: at least half a page with one line of dialogue.
   4. Pause to add a sensory detail (a sound or a smell) anywhere in the draft.

7. 20–30 min Centers and independent practice

   1. Ratio cards: draw two cards (for example 4 red, 6 blue) and write the ratio three ways plus two equivalent ratios
   2. Map corner: using the classroom atlas, record the latitude and longitude of three cities and one landmark
   3. Particle sketch: draw particles of a solid, a liquid and a gas in three boxes and label how each moves

   Device time (15 min): play the game named in this day's play field

   Today’s game: Rate Race

8. 5–10 min Closing circle SL.7.1

   1. Exit ticket on an index card: find the unit rate for 150 miles in 6 hours, then name two parts of a map.
   2. Whip-around: each student finishes the sentence "One thing that stuck with me today was..."
   3. Preview tomorrow in one sentence and collect reading logs.

Short day? Keep the unit rate lesson, the read-aloud trait chart and 10 minutes of drafting.