Virginia SOL S.1.b

Social Studies1st Grade

The Standard

applying geographic skills to identify and understand geographic features

Virginia Standards of Learning for History and Social Science

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students use maps, globes, and photographs to find features such as mountains, rivers, lakes, roads, and bridges. They describe each feature's location and how it affects people.
What Mastery Looks Like: Given a simple map, students can name features and locate them using words such as near, beside, and between. They can explain one way a feature shapes a place.
Common Misconceptions: Students may call every body of water an ocean or confuse mountains with hills. They may also mix up natural features, such as rivers, with built features, such as roads.
How to Assess It: Give students a simple map with a hill, river, road, and bridge. Ask them to circle two natural features, box one built feature, and describe one location.

Lesson moves

Build a landform tray with clay and blue yarn, then place labels for mountain, river, lake, road, and bridge.
Show a town beside a river and ask, "How might the river help people, and what problem might it cause?"
Play Feature Hunt: students draw a map card, locate the matching feature on a classroom map, and describe its position.
Walk around the school grounds, photograph natural and built features, then mark them on a simple class map.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to S.1.b, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

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