Landforms and Bodies of Water

About this resource

Landform or body of water? This is a complete kit for ten landform and water words, built for the table where children need different amounts of support. It starts with an anchor chart that gives each word a one-line meaning (mountain, hill, valley, plateau, island, peninsula, lake, river, ocean and bay). Children then circle the group, match a word to its meaning, find the word that does not belong, count a tray of words, fill in the word, choose the true sentence and cut and paste onto sort mats. Every item is printed text, so a child reads or hears the word and decides; there is no clip art. It comes with a tracker, a class grid and a family update, so nothing has to be written from scratch.

EVERYTHING INSIDE (30 pages)

• 15 student pages in 9 page types: Anchor Chart, My Word Mat, Circle It, Match It, Which One Does Not Belong?, Count the Groups, Fill In the Word, Circle the True Sentence, and Cut and Paste
• 67 scored items on 13 pages, every answer read from the word lists, never typed by hand
• 16 different words sorted into landforms and bodies of water (9 landforms, 7 bodies of water); 10 of them have a one-line meaning on the anchor chart
• 26 cut-and-paste pieces on 3 sort mats (8 words, then all 10 anchor words, then 8 meanings), each into two labeled boxes
• 2 answer keys, generated from the same data as the student pages
• 1 tracker (page, page type, items right, date) and 1 whole-class progress grid
• 1 team note (a hand-off page between team meetings) and 1 home page
• 1 filled example (an invented student), 1 phrase bank (16 observable-language starters), 1 binder cover and 6 divider tabs with a spine label to cut out
• Start Here and a how-to-read-a-page page

The Page Types, Easiest First

1. Anchor Chart (starting): the ten words, each with a short meaning, sorted into landforms and bodies of water, then the child writes a word of their own for each group.

2. My Word Mat (starting): a word mat for both groups to keep beside the child, with a box for a word they think of.

3. Circle It, 2 pages (1 dot): circle every landform or every body of water in a row of six words, then write how many. One page for each group.

4. Match It, 1 page (2 dots): six words and eight meanings. Write the letter of each word's meaning. Two meanings are not used, so the last match cannot be found by elimination.

5. Which One Does Not Belong?, 2 pages (2 or 3 dots): four words, one is from the other group. Set A circles it and writes its number; Set B also writes what the other three are.

6. Count the Groups, 2 pages (2 dots): eight words in a tray. Count the landforms and the bodies of water, then think of two more words for each.

7. Fill In the Word, 2 pages (2 or 3 dots): Set A gives a word and the child writes landform or body of water; Set B gives a meaning and the child picks the word from a box of ten (five are used).

8. Circle the True Sentence, 1 page (3 dots): three sentences about one word; exactly one is true.

9. Cut and Paste, 3 pages (1, 2 or 3 dots): a big two-box sort mat and a strip of pieces that touch edge to edge, so cutting is a few straight lines. Paste 1 sorts 8 words; Paste 2 sorts all 10 anchor words (the landform box is sized for six pieces); Paste 3 sorts 8 meanings.

Words Only, No Clip Art

There are no pictures to name. The words are everyday ones: mountain, valley, island, lake, river, ocean and more. No word is in both groups, so every item has one right answer.

Built For The Child Holding The Page

A big "My name" line, one short instruction, large rounded type, big answer boxes, and dots (not words or colors) to show which level a page is. Nothing on a student page is written for an adult. The file prints clean in black and white.

No Guessing The Answer

Wherever a child picks among printed spots (which words in a row match, which word is the odd one, which lettered meaning fits, where a word sits in the box of ten, which lettered sentence is true, the order of the pieces on the cut strip), the position of the right answer is checked so it does not sit in the same spot three times in a row.

Type In, Or Print

The name line and every answer box are type-in fields in any PDF reader: click one, type, then save. The same goes for the tracker, the class grid, the team note and the home page. This is a fillable PDF; it is not a Google Slides or PowerPoint file.

Who This Is For

Kindergarten through 2nd grade classrooms, self-contained and resource rooms, and any teacher building early geography vocabulary into a center, a small group or a morning work folder.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

A landforms and bodies of water worksheet set with the record-keeping around it. It is not a timed test, a screener, a clinical tool, or a claim about any student's age or rate of progress. There is no IEP goal language or eligibility wording anywhere in the file.