Download five themes of geography

FIVE THEMES OF
GEOGRAPHY
OBJECTIVES
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INTRODUCTION
These five themes of geography
provide a viable framework for
studying the world. Such themes
help organize the study of where
things are located, why they are
there, how they got there, and the
consequences of their being there.
Like interlocking puzzle pieces,
each of these themes is connected
to the others, and all five must
be addressed before a geographic
whole can be seen and comprehended.
This lesson incorporates five
overhead transparencies (master
handouts are provided from which
the transparencies can be made).
Each transparency corresponds to a
particular theme and an associated
activity; all five appear in suggested order. The transparencies must
be overlaid precisely on top of one
another to achieve the full picture.
define geography
gain an understanding of these
five themes of geography
identify each theme and explain
its characteristics
demonstrate how each theme
builds on the others
to create a geographic
perspective
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VOCABULARY
BACKGROUND
More than memorizing names and
places, the study of geography focuses
on answering important questions
about the interrelationships of our
world, both the physical and the
cultural. These five themes are interrelated: no one theme can be fully
understood without the other four,
just as no one part of our world can
be completely understood in isolation.
Geography is concerned with asking
important questions about the world:
geography (physical
and cultural)
intermediate
directions
location (absolute
and relative)
mental maps
industrial
place
dam
human/environment
interaction
reservoir
movement
agriculture
regions
commercial
latitude
residential
longitude
Where is it?
* Why is it there?
* What are the consequences of
its being there?
Five of the themes of geography that
help to examine these important questions and organize their answers are:
*
cardinal directions
LOCATION – Where is it located?
PLACE – What is it like there?
HUMAN/ENVIRONMENT
INTERACTION – What is the
relationship between the people
and the environment?
MOVEMENT – How and why are
places connected?
REGIONS – What binds a
place together?
OPENING THE LESSON
To give the students a general
knowledge of these five themes,
discuss the meaning of one theme
and its relationship to the others.
M AT E R I A L S
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set of five
transparencies, one
for each theme
(your school
office or local
photoduplicating
center should be
able to replicate
the handouts
on pages 50-54
into overhead
transparencies)
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overhead projector
photographs or
pictures for
analyzing the five
themes (selected
by the teacher
2
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from magazines,
books, etc.)
world atlases
and/or maps of the
United States, with
time zones
*
*
additional
blank overhead
transparencies
transparency
marking pens
TEACHING THE LESSON
What are absolute
and relative locations?
1. What do the students see
in this picture?
2. Use an overhead
marking pen to place a
dot (to indicate a precise
point or location) at the
intersection of the two roads.
LOCATION
Place the location transparency
on the overhead projector. This
shows an exact geographic location and begins to answer one of
the basic concepts of geography,
Where is it located?
3. Have the students tell the absolute
(exact) location of this dot. Reinforce the
idea that absolute location is simply a precise
point on the surface of the earth. The students’
addresses are examples of absolute locations. To identify
the absolute location of the dot, younger students may use the
street names (Main Street and Old Mill Road). Older students may use latitude
and longitude (39° N latitude, 92° W longitude).
4. Now have them describe the relative location of this dot. Younger students
may relate the dot’s location to another feature, such as, it is downhill from
the mountains. Older students may use cardinal or intermediate directions
(for example, the dot is southwest of the mountains).
What would it be like to live there?
BACKGROUND
A precise point on the surface of
the earth is an absolute location.
Coordinates, such as latitude and
longitude or street names and
numbers, indicate absolute location. Relative location refers to
the position of a point or place
in relation to other places. For
example, France is located across
the English Channel from England.
1. Ask the students to interpret what they see. Just by looking at this map,
what do they think it would be like to live at this location? (The students will
be able to determine very little because location provides little insight into
the character of a place.) Can they tell by the location whether this is a desirable place to visit? Would they like to move to this crossroads? What more do
they need to know about this location before they can decide?
2. Think of an intersection near your school or one with which all the
students are familiar.
3. Discuss the absolute and relative locations of that intersection. What are
the street names of that intersection? What is its latitude and longitude?
What other landmarks are close by?
4. Have any of the students ever moved to a different apartment, house, city,
state, or country? What did they want to know about the new location before
they moved there?
3
PLACE
Put the place transparency
over the location transparency, precisely aligning
the registration marks. The
second transparency adds
more information about the
town to help answer the question, What is it like there? It adds
to the picture a river (a physical feature) and a park (a human feature). The
river and the park can be used to discuss how physical and human
features give character and “personality” to a location,
thus creating a place.
1. Looking at the overhead transparency, ask the
students to interpret what they see. What can they now
tell about the location marked with a dot? How do the river
(a physical feature) and the park (a human feature) change the
character of this location? Would this be a desirable place to build a house?
Where else on the map might be a good place to build a house? Why? (For
example, next to the park might be a pleasant place to live. A house along
the river would have a good view, but that site might be threatened by
floods.) Which qualities make a place desirable?
2. What do the students think of when they envision the Grand Canyon?
Niagara Falls? New York City? Paris, France?
3. Divide the students into small groups and instruct each “team” to list at
least three physical and human characteristics to describe five well-known
locations (cities, countries, or places). Which team can guess the place in
the fewest number of clues? (Possible clues are: capital of an island country,
River Thames, Big Ben, and British Museum; or Middle Eastern country, Nile
River, Aswan Dam, and pyramids.)
4. Think of different locations in your own community. What comes to the
students’ minds when they think of each location? Which characteristics make
this location a “place”? Which features give it “personality”?
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BACKGROUND
The theme of place
investigates the physical
and cultural features
that give a location its
particular identity.
Location plus characteristics creates place. All
places have physical and
human qualities that lend
them personality and
character. The physical
environment and the
human characteristics of a
location make it different
from all other places on
earth. Like snowflakes,
no two places on earth
are exactly alike. People
perceive places according
to their own experiences
or points of view. Our
impressions and memories
of sounds, sights, and
smells of a place play a
role in our image of a
location. These mental
maps form a personal
reference point.
HUMAN/ENVIRONMENT
INTERACTION
Place the human/environment interaction transparency on top of the
first two, carefully lining
up the registration
marks. The third transparency adds several
buildings to the area,
including houses, a shopping center, a school, a
hospital, stores, and an
industrial complex, as
well as a dam, a reservoir,
and agriculture. These
illustrate how an area
changes when settlement
occurs and helps to
answer the question,
What is the relationship
between the people and
the environment?
BACKGROUND
The theme of human/
environment interaction
addresses the ways people
respond to and modify
the natural environment.
Sometimes people adapt
the way they live to suit
their physical setting. At
other times they change
their surroundings to meet
their particular needs.
1. Have the students discuss how the added features
have changed the landscape. How have the natural
settings of the river and the park been modified? Who made
the changes and why? How has the addition of the reservoir and the
dam affected the course of the river? How does the location of the shopping mall affect the development of the surrounding area? How might the
presence of farms affect the use of the land and the river?
2. Ask the students to think about their own communities. What if a
shopping mall was eliminated from (or added to) their community? How
would this change their environment?
3. List and discuss the positive and negative effects of building dams,
factories, and shopping malls.
4. Have the students bring in articles from the local newspapers that
discuss development plans which will affect their community (building roads,
town houses, shopping centers, sports stadiums). Follow the course of public
hearings, legislation, and community response for several weeks. What issues
were involved? How was the situation resolved? Did the conclusion satisfy
everyone concerned?
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MOVEMENT
Place the movement transparency on top of the
other three, precisely aligning the registration marks. This
transparency examines the question, How and why are places connected?
1. Ask the students the following questions: How do
the presence of railroads and airports affect the movement of people and goods into and out of this region? How do the
satellite dish and radio tower add to the movement of ideas? Why is
movement important?
2. What forms of movement are found in their community? How would their
lives be different without just one of these forms?
BACKGROUND
The theme of movement
looks at transportation
and communication systems that link people in
one location with those in
another location. The
fourth transparency adds
several components that
demonstrate how the
movement of people,
ideas, and materials keeps
a community alive. Roads,
railroads, and airports
have been added to move
goods and people to and
from the town. The river
makes possible the hydroelectric power plant, which
generates electricity for
the town and the surrounding area.
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5
REGIONS
Place a blank
transparency on top
of the four. Since the
definition of “region”
includes those characteristics that unite or bind
together an area, a blank
transparency upon which
to “draw” your own
regions best represents
this concept. This theme
of region helps to organize knowledge about the
land and its people as it
answers the question, What
binds a place together?
BACKGROUND
A region is an area of
the earth that has one or
more common factors found
throughout it. Human
factors, such as language
or government (a Spanishspeaking region or a communist country), or physical
features, such as mountains,
climate (a desert region), and
vegetation (redwood forest)
help to define a region. They
can be large or small; they
can overlap; and smaller
regions can lie within larger
ones. A region’s unifying
characteristics are often
strongest at its center and
become less well defined at
its periphery, which is why
regional boundaries are sometimes difficult to determine.
1. Have the students identify the residential, industrial,
and commercial regions formed by the overlay of transparencies. Where should the boundaries between the commercial
and the residential regions be drawn?
2. Identify the regions in your classroom. Is there a reading region? An
activity region? An art region? Where does one region begin and another end?
3. Look carefully at a map of the United States and identify each of the time
zones. Do the zones correlate to physical features of the land (i.e., do they
define a region), or were they drawn arbitrarily? How would the students redraw
the time zones?
4. What are some other regions in the United States? (Possible answers:
Northeast, Southwest, Death Valley, Silicone Valley, Badlands, Everglades, Great
Plains, Research Triangle.) Which characteristics unify and identify these areas?
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CONCLUDING THE LESSON
To demonstrate how these five themes of
geography are interdependent, remove all the
overlays except the fourth one, movement.
Ask the students to describe movement based on
the information they see here. They should notice
that this overlay has little meaning without the other
transparencies. Emphasize that no single theme can be
completely understood without the other four. How is this
interdependence true in their own community?
EXTENDING THE LESSON
Divide the class into small groups of four or five students. Give each group
a photograph taken from a travel magazine or refer to a photo in a textbook.
Have them consider how each of the five themes is represented in their photograph. Design a presentation of these five themes based on it, using five blank
transparencies (one for each theme) and overhead markers. For example, with
a photo of New York Harbor, students might draw a map of New York State to
show the harbor’s absolute and relative location; water (a physical feature) and
the buildings around the harbor (human features) to show place; docks on the
shore to show human/environment interaction; boats to show movement; and
an aerial view of the city to highlight the harbor as a region. (Possible cities
for presentation include Chicago, Miami, San Francisco,
St. Louis, Denver, Santa Fe, Boston, Seattle,
New Orleans, and Atlanta.)
Plan a model
lakefront community for
2,000 residents.
Integrate physical features
and human needs. Bring in examples
from the newspaper of communities
being built in your area.
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L O C AT I O N
Use with Lesson 1
9
PLACE
Use with Lesson 1
10
Use with Lesson 1
11
HUMAN/ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION
MOVEMENT
Use with Lesson 1
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