I retired from teaching middle school science after 28 years this past June and will be going through my resources and updating/posting lessons that can be used for 5th-8th grade science. One of the topics I really enjoyed teaching was “Adopt a City” with my 6th graders. I am going to be combing through my Google Drive and adding updates when I can. My goal is to continue to help teachers with their lesson plans by having lessons ready to go, and since I started this domain in 2000 – for FREE.
This handout is an introduction to the unit, students will explore different cities around the world and come up with their top 4 choices. A draft round selection process will determine which city each student ‘adopts’. I usually used a ‘wheel of names’ and when a student is picked, they come up to the from of the classroom and say “For the 2025 Adopt a City Draft, I choose XXXXXX” and if they want to can give a reason as to why they chose that city.
Additional resources will be posted as part of this unit.
Adopt a City (Google Doc View) – List of International Cities at various latitudes and longitudes around the globe to introduce the unit.
- To make changes to this Google doc, you can make a copy and then edit it to customize it for your students. Please do not send editing access requests.
Find your city using Google Maps (link).
Middle School Science Lessons 
Comments are welcome!