Skip to content
PlayOwl

Geography · Grade 4

Illinois and the Great Lakes

The five Great Lakes hold about one-fifth of the world's surface fresh water, and Illinois sits on one of them. Learners compare the lakes with real data, trace a drop of water from Lake Superior to the Atlantic, discover how Ice Age glaciers scooped out the lake basins and flattened Illinois, follow the story of the Chicago Portage, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the reversal of the Chicago River, and weigh how the lakes help people and how people help or harm the lakes.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 90 minutes
  • Great Lakes check: 10 questions
  • Ways to answer: choose an answer, highlight a text, pin a map, match pairs, type a number and put in order
Try it now (no account) One of the five free starter courses Open in PlayOwl

What learners will discover

  • Name, locate and compare the five Great Lakes using area and depth data, and trace how water flows through them to the Atlantic Ocean.
  • Explain how Ice Age glaciers shaped the Great Lakes basins and the land of Illinois.
  • Explain how the Chicago Portage, the Illinois and Michigan Canal (1848) and the reversal of the Chicago River (1900) linked the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and changed Chicago.
  • Describe how the Great Lakes affect people, through drinking water, shipping and lake-effect snow, and how people affect the lakes, through invasive species and runoff.

Lessons

  1. Five lakes, one system 8 steps4 practiceabout 22 min
  2. Shaped by ice 8 steps5 practiceabout 20 min
  3. Linking the Lakes to the Mississippi 8 steps5 practiceabout 24 min
  4. Living with the lakes 7 steps4 practiceabout 20 min
  5. Great Lakes check 10 questions at the end

Keep exploring

Games to practice with

  • Globe ExplorerSpin a real 3D globe, flip to the flat map, and find continents, oceans and countries.
  • Pin the PlanetDrag the pin onto wonders, cities and exact latitude and longitude points.
  • Mapmaker QuestFollow directions to make a map, then read its legend, compass rose and scale.

More 4th grade geography

Guide for grown-ups