Mississippi River: Full Day Substitute Plans

This full day of activities for you or for your substitute teacher will support your classroom study of American History and geography. See the product preview to see every page included in this file.

Included are:
Morning and afternoon large group “messages” for students to complete and for the sub teacher to use as “get acquainted” and “end of day wrap up” meetings. Each message should take from 30 to 45 minutes of class time.

Reader Response papers for students to write after they have read independently for 30 (or more) minutes. Students will record what they learned about plot, characters, setting, and new words, whether they read a chapter of the book or the entire book. Non fiction readers will record facts learned. These reader response papers provide the opportunity for small group or large group sharing upon completion.

River Reading and Activities:
Reading comprehension passage and questions on the history of the river
Constructing a timeline of the river
Locating cities and states along the Mississippi River on a USA map
Reading comprehension passage and questions about the history of steamships
Creating a travel poster for Steamship travel on the Mississippi
Reading comprehension passage and questions about Mark Twain
Reading comprehension passage and questions about the Sultana
Analyzing data on the 4 greatest rivers of the world
Locating the 4 greatest rivers on a world map
Playing a Mississippi River board game to review information learned today
Constructing a T Chart to brainstorm advantages and disadvantages of the river
Researching a topic or writing an original story about the river (graphic organizers provided)
Finding definitions for common river terminology
Vocabulary games for the end of the day

Also included: activities grid showing materials needed and possible variations for differentiation of instruction; forms for a sub teacher; common core standards aligned

1 PDF file.