103 Ways to Teach Geography

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The link below will take you to the full slide show....explore the many exciting and innovative ways to teach geography

103 WAYS TO TEACH GEOGRAPHY

Below are some activities that I found particularly interesting.  All the methods move beyond the lower levels of understanding and remembering of Bloom's toxonomy.  These methods address the higher levels of thinking and learning; applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

The powerful elements of Social Studies are addressed for each activity. 

This activity suggests student to walk 5 minutes in any direction and take a picture.

This could be great to work on map skills, or put the pictures together for a map of the local area.

This is meaningful, integrative and active

Have staff, faculty, students and families send postcards when they travel.  The postcards could then be linked to a map for an awesome display and encourage discovery about new places while learning the relationship between regions.

This is meaningful and challenging

Capture curiosity and engage students by encouraging students to develop 60 second films and share them.  Students can learn from real world examples and share their learning in meaningful ways.

This is integrative, challenging and active

Posterous is a website where items can be published in a safe space to share that allows you to control who sees what.  This provides students with an excellent forum to share their work and learn from others.

This is value based, active, challenging and meaningful

This activity asks students to draw what they hear from an oral reading of a news article of geographical significance.  This taps into student's creativity and allows for an alternate to student written responses.  Allows for multi-sensory learning and discovery.

This is integrative and active

This suggests to provide a mystery picture to students that they can comment on through voice thread.  This offers a great way to introduce a topic, pre-assess and activate student's prior knowledge.

This is integrative, challenging and active

Using montage a google create images related to a specific topic.  This is a great way to start a lesson, stimulate conversation and get students ready for learning.

This is challenging and active

This activity asks students to bring in articles of geographical significance to the.  This articles can be displayed around a world map.  This can allow for a discussion of geography as well as analysis of various news reporting.

This is integrative, value based and active

Students sit back to back in this activity and one student in the pair describes the image to the other who must try to draw the image.  This is a great creative thinking activity and develops effective communication skills.  Can easily be tied to a number of different lessons.

This is active, integrative and challenging

In this activity students have an atlas and must race to find a specific obscure location.  This allows for the active seeking of information using what students already know and provides a forum for learning more geography.

This is meaningful, challenging and active

I encourage you to check out all the ideas..there are so many more that are amazing...see what interests you!

"I affirm that to grow as a teacher, I must remain an alert learner."

                                                                                                             -Eric Maisel

Hug the Earth

ED 3120 Teacher Candidate Students Hugging our world

Geography Awareness Week
3rd Week of November....

Use this time to explore our world.......



The theme for this year is: Declare your Interdpendence!
The theme is designed to focus on the idea that we are all connected to the rest of the world through the decision that we make on a daily basis like the foods we eat and the things that we buy!

Thinking about global relationships make it easy to bring activities into the classroom that focus this idea withing the 5 themes of geographical knowledge:   

• Location
• Place
• Relationships within places
• Movement
• Regions

Also keep in mind the 6 elements of geographical standards:

1. The world in spatial terms
2. Places and regions
3. Physical Systems
4. Human Systems
5. Environment and Society
6. Uses of geography

Barbara and Sam playing the geography game

Our Social Studies Class played a question and answer game on geography--what a great way to involve students, work together, have fun and learn along the way!!

Some useful resources for global teaching and learning:

The National Geographic Site: is a wealth of information for lessons, activities, games and much more focused on the 2012 geography awareness theme.

Teacher Vision: Contains geography printables, lessons, resources,  activities and mapping resources

GIS Education Community: Educators help students to use Global Information Systems to explore their world from a local to global scale.

"Without geography, you're nowhere"

                                                               -Jimmy Buffett

                                                                                                                                               

Maps: Should Accuracy be Assumed?

Mercator Projection Map created in 1569

Do you look at this map and think....That's not accurate?
Most people don't...we accept what we see!
(The American Cartographic Association)

Flat maps do not offer an accurate picture of the world...globes allow for a more realistic perspective of our world.  

To teach children to be global, civic minded citizens we must teach students to look at maps critically without assumption!

Information and recommendations on this post are based on the following article:
McCall, A.L. (2011). Promoting critical thinking and inquiry through maps elementary classrooms. The Social Studies.102. 132-138. 
This article points out biases in published maps and recommends ways to promote critically thinking and examination of maps for young elementary students. 

There are biases in maps

• World maps have much distortion because of the display of a large area on a flat surface
• Most maps place North at the top, but polar direction has nothing to do with what is at the top
• Some projections place Europe and the Americas in the center and split Asia into 2 landmasses, this reflects a European or Western bias
• Geographic relationships such as shape, size and direction are often distorted-based on perspective of the cartographer
• The Mercator map exaggerates the sizes of European colonizing nations while depicting the sizes of colonized nations as smaller than they actually are.

    What can teachers do?

• Have young children make maps before reading maps
• Allows students to learn about scale, perspective, symbols and map keeps in meaningful ways before exposure to published maps.

• Engage students in questioning maps
• help students to create more representative mental maps of various land masses.

• Encourage more than one right answer
• allow students to discuss view points.

• Integrate geography into all areas of the curriculum
• everything happens in a place, use a map!
• use in math to measure distances on maps and use map scales.

• Compare three different world maps
• The Mercator Projection (conformal map)
• The Peters Projection (equal area map)
• The World Turned Upside Down (upside-down map)
• All maps are available from ODT which provides innovative maps, products and resources.

Social studies teaching encourages students to look at materially critically, to question value and purpose; these same strategies need to be used when looking at maps!

The Theme from the National Council for the Social Studies of people, places and environments requires students to use high level of thinking skills, these standards should motivate teachers to help students question the accuracy of the maps they create and use.

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers."

                                          -Josef Albers

What Kind of Teacher are You???

How teachers teach can be as important as what they teach...

How a teacher teaches is greatly influenced by the philosophy embraced

Which Classroom would you feel more comfortable in?

     OR

Do you lean toward the traditional or the progressive?

I was recently encouraged to examine my educational philosophy and was not surprised by the results.

Although I think how I teach and the environment that I create in my future classroom will be very dependent upon the needs and experiences of the students in that class; I identified as a Cognitivism/Constructivism teacher.  

Cognitivism/Constructivism philosophy supports student's active construction of meaning through experience reflection, with the teacher facilitating environmental conditions which mediate those experiences to support student learning. 

My lowest score was essentialism which supports student learning in a core of basic knowledge.  Teaching is systematic, disciplined, and subject centered.  This is a practical approach with an emphasis on intellectual and moral standards.

Other categories held very similar scores for me and were only slightly lower than my highest scoring category, these were:

• Humanism: The perspective is on the human potential of growth, there is a focus on the affective and cognitive dimensions of learning.  It is believed that behavior is the consequence of human choice and learning will flourish in an environment which supports it.
• Progressivism: The focus is on the child not the subject matter.  Student interest is important and learning should be active and reflective.  It is believed that ideas are important for the future.
• Reconstructivism/Critical Theory: The belief is centered on the idea that schools are the leaders in developing skills for students that will transform future society.  The school is responsible for the knowledge and skills which will lead to societal reform. 

The results of this inventory leads me to believe that I do believe in helping students construct meaning, in a supportive and active environment that is focused on the student in order to create the global citizens of tomorrow.

Core skills and knowledge are very important, but those skills can be transmitted in ways that allows the learner to wonder, examine, discover, interpret; thus creating deep understanding of concepts which become a part of the student's social, cognitive and emotional development.

What age is your "dream class"

Think for a minute, when you imagine your classroom--what age are your students?

What are your preferences and how does your philosophy impact your view?

Teaching students of any age is exciting; but I have found my preference for teaching is working with 7-8 year olds where there is so much growth and development.  Cognitive skills become more advanced and students are capable of a higher level of thinking.  Social development is expanding rapidly and it is vital that students are encouraged to explore and are supported in inquiry learning.   

Diane Laufenberg on TED provides a clear vision of using authentic experiences so that students can develop meaning for themselves--and this can be done for learners of all ages....take a look:

I think she demonstrates clearly that students should be empowered, failure embraced and we need to do more than give them information; we need to have them seek out what they will DO with that information!

Whatever your classroom looks like, whatever the age of your students, whatever your philosophy..we should remember....

"Learning is something students do, not something done to students"
       -Alfie Kohn

Does Assessment equal Evaluation?

Assessment and Evaluation often brings to mind paper and pencils tests.....

What does it really mean?

ASSESSMENT:  Collecting evidence of learning as students move toward accomplishing objectives.

EVALUATION:  The process of using information to judge whether a program is meeting student's needs effectively.
                                                                                                                       -(Taken from Sunal & Haas (2011))

Assessment and Evaluation are not equivalent

Evaluation is a process to look at the ability of a program to meet student's needs.  Assessment is one piece of information that is necessary to have effective evaluation.



How do we verify students are learning.....Formative Assessment
Formative assessment should be ongoing and happen throughout the learning cycle.  It allows teachers to make changes in lesson plans; identifying what skills students have, what needs to be taught and what concepts need re-teaching or extra practice.  This allows a teacher to determine how well students are moving toward reaching objectives.

The impact of standardized testing on assessment and evaluation:
Teachers, administrators and students have all been impacted by the high-stakes standardized testing.  The focus has become student performance on the test related to specific units of knowledge.  We have forgotten the essence of twenty-first century skills that should be the focus; what students can DO with their knowledge (Sunal & Haas, 2011).  Teachers must now use assessment and evaluation as part of the instructional process in order to meet learning needs and allow students in the development of the knowledge that will aid them in test taking.

In this world of Standardized Testing we as teachers should not forget about, but focus more on Authentic Assessment. (see posting of 10/5/2012 Are You Learning?)

Authentic assessment are activities that require students to apply knowledge, think critically and use skills in real-world context.  Some suggestions in addition to methods that have been previously discussed

• Performance Tests
• Checklists
• Classroom Websites
• Quality Circles
• Self-Evaluation Reports

Particularly in Social Studies teaching, we aim to assist in the development of future citizens, we cannot forget to move beyond the pen and pencils of traditional testing.

Keep in mind...

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts."
                                                                                               -Albert Einstein

A Visit from Benjamin Franklin

HISTORY IS ALIVE

Thank you to Ben Franklin for sharing your knowledge, experience and perspective of the American Revolution

Our Research Methods in Teaching Social Studies class was fortunate to have a visit from Ben Franklin.  We as teacher candidates were able to truly see the benefits of teaching through reenactments, as if Mr. Franklin had stepped out of the historic scene.  We were able to ask questions and hear his views on the reactions of colonists during the American Revolution.

The artifacts below were used in the creation of an an artifact bag (see 9/30/12 post; Finding Artifacts in the Classroom for more information on artifact bags) centered around the stamp act to motivate students to use inquiry skills and discover the history of the United States.

"Old paper" with stamp from Stamp Act

Colonists reading stamp act

Newspaper article from Pennsylvania Gazette 1775

The information shared by Benjamin Franklin enhanced my knowledge and understanding of the American Revolution related to the stamp act.  This powerful social studies learning experience cannot be obtained from a textbook.

In My Future Classroom

I will seek opportunities for students to experience Social Studies in authentic ways through the use of a variety of resources.  This class has taught me that history can be exciting, interesting, meaningful and active.  Some resources to support student understanding and growth as historians are:

• Artifact bags
• People in the community who have lived through specific time periods or who are knowledge of events
• Museums--virtual tours are available
• The local community; government buildings, architecture, research on street names, towns and villages or local historical places
• Documents/Primary sources
• Diaries, Letters and Pictures
• Paintings and drawings
• Reenactment and drama

The ability to include diverse perspectives, encourage critical thinking and integrate Social Studies material with other content areas is a goal of teaching Social Studies.  The ability to truly engage learners with the ultimate goal of creating the citizens of tomorrow is the goal of being a teacher!

"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward  you are likely to see."

                          -Winston Churchill                                             

Are You Learning?

All Teachers Must Answer the Following Questions

1.  How do we know students are learning?

    2.  How do we know our teaching is effective

There are many ways to assess.
Teachers must employ a variety of tools and strategies to get a broad sense of student learning.

The video "Assessing Student Learning" found at http://www.learner.org/workshops/socialstudies/index.html provides demonstration of a variety of assessment methods

This poster was provided as a list of guidelines for assessment.

This can be used as a criteria for designing assessments! 

One of the examples shown in the video is a 4th grade class engaged in a cooperative learning project.  Students were provided with the criteria for assessment, and focus questions for the project were developed as a class in order to assess prior knowledge and give students the guidelines for the project content.

Other examples demonstrated were chart creation with Kindergarten students and writing letters related to in-class discovery.

Ways to Assess to Student Learning

Traditional Methods

Binary Choice:  Captures important thoughts and ideas but is susceptible to guessing

Multiple Choice: Tests a broad sense of knowledge but good questions can be difficult to develop

Matching:  Good sampling of large amounts of knowledge, careful construction is essential

Interpretive Exercises:  Assesses application skills, critical thinking skills, comprehension and reading skills, but can be difficult to write.

Other Methods (authentic assessment)

Included but not limited to:

• Portfolios
• Journals
• Graphic Organizers
• Projects
• Research Projects: cooperative and individual
• Role Play and drama

These methods allow for active classroom experiences, and learning related to real-life purposeful activities. 

Assessment should match learning goals and lesson objectives!

Teachers need to choose the best method and use multiple strategies in order to promote learning and gather evidence of student performance.

Remember:  "If you don't change assessment, nothing changes"

                                                                                                    -Bernice McCarthy