Christ The King RC Primary School

The Americas:

Can you come on a

Great American Road Trip?

In this unit, the children travel the North and South American continents, and distinguish between the terms ‘continent’, ‘region’, ‘country’, ‘state’ and ‘city’ along the journey. Finding and using images and maps on the internet and in atlases, children make notes on cities and record their countries and/or states. They also compare some built environments and settings of the cities and, through them, identify some key regions of the American continents. The famous American highway route 66 from Chicago to St. Louis is used as a stimulus for creating a labelled and annotated map of the historic route.

How can I support learning at home?

You can reinforce and support pupils' learning through lots of ways:

  • Work through and discuss areas found on the Americas knowledge organiser
  • Use a map to identify countries in North and South America
  • Use eight compass points to locate cities in North and South America
  • Name some North and South American cities
  • Use geographical language to describe photographs of some North and South American cities.
  • Use a map, atlas or Google Earth to name some regions in North and South America.

You might even enjoy following other famous routes in the Americas – for example the Pan-American Highway (19,000 miles from North to South, from Alaska to Argentina) or the Pacific Coast Highway (600 miles along California’s coast). You can even use Digimaps for Schools to enjoy this virtual trip!

Celebrating Our Learning

Throughout our learning our strong focus was on a number of states located along the Route 66 highway. Inspired by John Mayor singing "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66", we looked at human and physical characteristics of these states using images from atlases, Google Earth and Digimap for Schools. In groups, children then decided upon a state of their interest and, using this as their stimulus, they researched and created their own human map of the historic route. With this complete, children were able to use some geographical vocabulary to compare similarities and differences between states, such as weather/climate, settlements, distances, etc.

During our exit point, the children thoroughly enjoyed sharing their learning journey with our parents/carers in their red Cadillac car whilst creating lots of fun memories along their way!

Culcheth Lane, Manchester, Lancashire M40 1LU

0161 681 2779
For telephone enquiries please ask for Mrs Potter.

contact@christtheking.manchester.sch.uk
At point of contact, enquires and queries will be dealt with by Mrs. Potter.
For a paper copy of any information on this website, please contact the school office.
SEN enquiries will be passed on to the school SENDCo Mrs Holroyd.