Students become Kentucky Globetrotters who use maps, photos, satellite images, and passports to plan journeys from Kentucky to world regions and explain how physical and cultural characteristics affect how people live. Across four weeks, they practice core geography tools through daily hands-on map challenges, partner map talks, passport reflections, and route-map revisions that build toward strong geographic reasoning. The experience helps students compare regions to Kentucky, communicate their ideas clearly, and apply feedback as they create evidence of learning in their passports and a class geography showcase video shared with families.

Students will use map tools and geographic representations such as titles, symbols, legends, compass roses, photos, and satellite images to locate places and plan routes from Kentucky to world regions. They will identify continents, oceans, hemispheres, the Equator, and the Prime Meridian to describe absolute and relative location and compare regions to Kentucky. Students will explain how physical and cultural characteristics of places affect how people live, move, adapt, and share culture across regions. They will communicate their learning through passport entries, partner map talks, reflections, and a class showcase video that demonstrates accurate geography vocabulary and map skills.

Students will create individual travel passports with sentence-and-sketch checkpoint entries after each map skill, plus labeled route maps that trace journeys from Kentucky to world regions using titles, symbols, legends, compass roses, and cardinal directions. Throughout the unit, they will also produce comparison sketches and short oral “map talk” explanations that show how physical and cultural features affect people and how places connect to Kentucky. As a class, students will build a large interactive wall map display with yarn travel paths, region stickers, and weekly comparison markers. The final product will be a short “Globetrotter News” showcase video, shared with families by QR code or link, featuring each student demonstrating one map tool, identifying a region, and sharing a favorite passport page with an explanation.

Begin with a “Great Seussian Send-Off” by reading Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, then reveal the classroom as the Kentucky Globetrotter Passport Office with the giant wall map, Kentucky marked as Home Base, and yarn ready for future routes. Students follow simple travel clues to locate Kentucky, describe its relative location with map words, and help start the year’s globetrotter game. Next, each child receives a pre-made passport with their photo, adds personal information, and creates a first page sketch of Home Base to finish at home with family support. Close with a circle reflection using “I can now use a map to learn about ___, and I still wonder ___,” and a quick partner share of their passport page.

Turn the final product into a shareable class “Globetrotter News” video and send it home as a QR code or secure link for families to watch. In the video, each student briefly stands by the giant wall map, demonstrates one map tool, identifies a region, and shares a passport sketch or sentence explaining how physical or cultural features affect people there. Add clips of partner map talks, route maps, and weekly sticker reflections so families can see growth across the unit, then display passports and the wall map in the hallway with the QR code for a school-wide viewing station. To deepen celebration, invite another 3rd grade class or school leaders to watch the video and leave short feedback notes or video messages for the “Kentucky Globetrotters.”