ELED 434: Children and Social Studies: teaching Geography

for understanding

Happy Geography Day!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFtb3EtjEic

Activating Prior Knowledge

What do you think of when you hear the word:

GEOGRAPHY?

Spend two minutes listing the words that come to mind.

Essential Question

How are knowledge and skills in GEOGRAPHY

critical to social studies education?

What is Geography as it (often) appears in elementary schools?

Geography is an integrative discipline that brings together the physical and human dimensions of the world in the study of people, places and environmentsIt should involve more than arcane facts; it’s putting the facts together, combined with perspective

It is a worldview.

Can teaching for geography contribute to citizenship education? How?

Answer

Knowledge and skills in geography contribute to our ability to understand economic, social, political, and cultural phenomenon in their context.

Furthermore, we need a basic knowledge base and skill set in geography in our everyday lives. (Moving within and between our communities, understanding our physical world, and explaining social and cultural differences.

Powerful Geography Education for Understanding

I strong knowledge of Geography helps children to:

build a sense of civic efficacy.overcome ego/ethnocentrismCare for “places” and the environments environments they call homemake informed economic and political decisions

Basic Knowledge and skills taught in Elementary schools

Five Fundamental Themes of Geography

MR.HELP (mnemonic device)

Movement

Region

Human/Environment Interaction

Location

Place

Movement

The movement of people locally and globally for various purposes (migration).

Economic transactions lead to the movement of goods (trade).

Advances in transportation and communication allow for the relatively free movement of ideas around the globe.

Regions

A region is an area that displays unity in terms of selected criteria

criteria: landform, religion, ethnicity, etc.

Regions are HUGE part of the Virginia Standards of Learning in Social Studies. Can you think of where regions are emphasized?

Human-Environment Interaction

The ways in which humans change their environment to meet needs. (Where is this located in the Social Studies SOLs?)

The ways in which the environments shapes human life

The existence natural resources and their influence on culture, economics, and the environment.

Location

There are two kinds of location emphasized in schools:

(1) absolute location refers to the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) as well as longitude and latitude position.

(2) relative location is a way of understanding where one is in relationship to other aspects of the physical environment (close, near, two blocks from campus).

GPS technology translates absolute location into relative location for people. That’s what makes it so popular.

Place (cultural geography)

“Place” includes the cultural characteristics of spaces

language, religion, politics, customs, gender roles, transportation, laws, economics, food, industry/agriculture all have an effect on how we interpret where we are.

Going beyond lines on a map!

Making Geography meaningful, early

Basic Knowledge acquisition about maps What are the lines on a map for?

What do the colors mean?

How do you read a map?

What is a compass rose?

Cardinal directions?

All of these are important, but if we leave teaching “geography” at this, what kinds if misconceptions might students be left with? Use the map on the next slide to help you think about this.

Choropleth Maps: from: http://www.popvssoda.com/countystats/total-county.html

Essential Question

How are knowledge and skills in GEOGRAPHY critical to social studies education?