Geography

So - when I was younger, one of my MOST HATED things was the five themes of geography. I remember in 8th grade, sitting in the class going over the five themes and having to memorize them etc. I was thinking about that today, as we are going over things in methods class on how to run a geography class that is effective - and I spent part of my drive home today thinking about why I hated the five themes SO much.

I think the biggest reason was that I didn't understand what they were. All I understood was that there were five of them, and they had kind of weird names and it was boring. I think the essential question here is - what are ways that we can make the five themes make SENSE to kids...it should be interesting, yes, but they also need to understand what they are, and what they mean.

By far the hardest two for EVERYONE to understand is: PLACE and LOCATION
Who the heck came up with those names? I mean, seriously, if a room full of history ed majors can't distinguish very well, how the heck are middle schoolers supposed to understand? How can we make the two understandable to students? I think we should begin by teaching place. Have kids draw a picture of their room - that is a special place to them...or just their favorite 'place'. Later, you can find the location of that place...if that makes sense. Coors Field is my favorite place...its location? 20th and Blake Street in Denver, CO. It seems simple, but to me it made sense, and I think it will to kids too.

Movement is fairly easy - we discussed it in class today. There are a lot of ways that you can connect movement to the other social studies disciplines...history with trade routes, immigration, etc...

Human Environmental Interaction is probably my favorite to teach kids as the concept is fairly simple, but the words are really huge. I think that, younger kids especailly, feel a sense of accomplishment when they understand and learn the meaning of big words. I can still rememeber learning to spell "Mississippi" when I was young and I think I ran around the house spelling it about 218665464 times before my mother finally was able to shut me up. By then, I had found my new favorite word "ColoradoRockies" - and no, I could not spell one without the other... and there is this strange little tune I made up that I sang all the letters to.

Region can be tough, but fun. I think students can learn fairly easy to understand what those things mean - especially when they look at things that are relevant to THIER life. For example, if you asked kids what region Colorado is in, many of them (living here of course) would say 'west'. While this is how WE identify ourselves, many other places aroudn the US would qualify us as 'midwest' or 'southwest'. Students could be asked to explain how we could fit into ALL of the categories. They could also look at a map of a specific area and try to create as many different regions as they can...among other things.


I think geography could be a lot of fun to teach. I would actually love to teach a class on culture someday - introducing students to four or five different cultures over the course of a sememster where they learn simple words - facts about the country or countries/religions - how they dress - customs- foods- etc. I think it would be wonderful to find people who are from a culture to come in and speak with the students. I think this sort of a class is really missing from our schools and that American students tend to be wayyyyyyyyyy too ethnocentric sometimes. I learned a lot when I was teaching in Japan, and I hope that someday I can get kids immersed in other cultures - even if it just happens though a school and a classroom...it could really help their future as an American and as a citizen of the world.