June 23, 2017

Over the last half-term I have been teaching my class about Latin America. After completing an overview of the continent and locating its key features, I decided that we would take a closer look at Brazil. The children were starting from a low knowledge base with regards to the country, so I needed something informative for a start.

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The resources available on sharing websites were a little light to be honest and the most were not visually appealing. Twinkl's Brazil resources on the other hand were much more broad and went beyond a simple power point presentation. 

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I could have easily whizzed through the ppt (click here the link) with the children in 15 minutes, but the children had so many questions from it. Questions about the Amazon River and the colonial and cultural links with Portugal to name a couple. It was great to see the children's curiosity really grow! There were no slumped heads being propped up, or sleepy yawns - all of the children were excited and engaged, which is half of the battle.

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After completing the ppt, I got the children to complete a Brazil fact sheet which I found on twinkl (click here for the link). This involved the children working with their partners to outline the key facts about Brazil (population, capital city and so on). The fact sheet was nicely organised and was great for sticking into the children's books for evidence of progress in Geography. In order to differentiate the activity, I got my highers to draw two objects that they felt represented Brazil and to explain their reasoning for their choices. For my lowers, I cut off the bottom section of the fact sheet 'Other facts about Brazil'.

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Over the next couple of weeks my class are going to continue on with their learning about Brazil. There are some nice lesson plans on twinkl (click here for the link) under the topic of Brazil, which are acting as the basis for my planning. They are saving me a lot of time - which being a teacher is very important! They also have some good cross-curricular links, which means I can avoid the mental gymnastics of trying to work out how to link everything together! 

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Tchau!