For a brief background overview of the “Big Ideas in Geography” approach to designing and using educational materials, see
– Big Ideas in Geography overview presentation
– Big Ideas in Geography map handout
We would not recommend starting a class with this level of abstraction, however. We begin with the following suggestion:
The first unit in a geography class has three “jobs” –
– engage students
– introduce the idea of geographic analysis
– provide some basic background information
Day 1. One time-tested way to start a geography class
is with a whole-class geographic-decision “game.”
In this one, students are decision-makers trying
to choose a location for a settlement in a “new” land.
We can provide a number of classroom-tested activities
that use a number of different maps about real places.
The different options fit different “slots” in the US
or world history curriculum: e.g., Jamestowne Colonie
(the three files below), Nile Valley (called Choosing a Capital,
in the SW Asia unit), and Vienna (called Conditions
and Connections, in the Europe unit). Others under
development include Michilmackinac, Ticonderoga,
and Singapore. The clickable map lets the users create
custom maps to fit specific ways of playing this game.
NOTE: download clickable files to your hard drive
in order to use the layer-click feature
that lets you customize your activity map.
We will soon add hot links to send Chromebook users
to clickable versions of these maps for their “toys” –
a somewhat less effective workaround until Google
adds layer functionality to their software.
Day 2. A map of ancient cities provides a review
of basic world geography and is also a prompt
for a discussion of world population patterns
(Ask: “Why do so many people live in just a
small fraction of the earth’s land?”)
Togetherm the Jamestowne and Ancient Cities activities
provide an opportunity for teachers to diagnose how
much prior knowledge students have about US history,
names of continents, general world environments,
and especially map-reading skills.
Here, we emphasize that many teachers have observed
that the skills of map interpretation are easier to teach
in the context of an engaging activity and an important map,
rather than the kind of standalone “map skills” lesson
that is all too common in textbooks or on the internet –
namely, one that uses a collection of unrelated maps,
often of trivial topics.
FYI: This scaffold is the form we use in designing activities,
so that we have a clear idea of the kind of prior knowledge
that is expected in order to do an activity:
Remediation: Students may also need a basic review
of continent names and the location of the equator.
(It’s a fact – they can see it on hundreds of maps
and still not remember where it is!)
If students need a still more comprehensive review
of basic map-reading skills – directions, coordinates,
latitude-longitude, etc. – this variation of the old game
called “Battleship” involves trying to find a pirate
in the Caribbean Sea:
- BI0P Where is the Pirate two-person game
- BI0P Where Is The Pirate clickable map
The New York Geographic Alliance
www.nygeographicalliance.org/
has a similar game called “Where is the Spy”
as part of their package of activities
related to the Erie Canal.
Optional world map activity:
This simple two-color dot-map activity
clearly illustrates the global patterns
of population and wealth. It can serve
as a kind of rationale for learning geography:
Also in the first week: In this small-group, lab,
or take-home make-a-poster activity, students can
use simple handout tables or do an internet inquiry
using the CIA Factbook website (an introduction
to an authoritative source of factual data):
If students listen to their peers’ summaries or view their posters,
they will inductively pick up an important fact about the world:
Most middle-sized countries in the world are much more crowded
than the states that are approximately the same area. Population
density, in turn, underlies many current issues, from resource use
to hazard vulnerability and environmental pollution.
One more way to prompt a hypothesis-generating discussion:
This clickable map and teacher notes provide question and answers
about global patterns of family size, literacy, and several other topics
that can be used to get student attention and formulate hypotheses
for investigation during the rest of the course.
- BI1 World Demography clickable map
- BI1E World demography maps Teacher Notes
- BI1Ex Map Correlation presentation
This presentation can be used to illustrate how geographers
generate hypotheses and select data to test those ideas
(or save it for the China, India, or Africa unit).
CAUTION #1: These abstract maps should be supplemented
with concrete case studies and images, from personal experience,
online videos, or a comparison site such as Material World.
CAUTION #2: A class should not spend more than a few days;
doing the Jamestowne “game,” Ancient Cities, and a selection
of the remedial or supplementary activities listed above.
The goal is to engage attention and make some hypotheses,
not to teach world geography in one giant introductory lesson!