Key:

Teacher's Guide

Mission 1

Mission 2

Mission 3

Optional Activity:
Trade Conference

Links

Glossary

Introduction
Aim
Rationale
Learners
Prerequisites
Subject-Matter
Goals and Objectives
Instructional Plan
Materials
Assessment and Evaluation
Appendices
   Resources
   Glossary

Introduction

Our United States is a curriculum web that introduces students to issues surrounding the relationship between the environment and human activities. GeoTeams of students will complete three "missions" that will acquaint them with information about one region of the United States in comparison to other regions, give them a general familiarity with issues of "self-sufficiency," and prepare them to make predictions about the human activities in other regions of the world.




Aim

The Geoteam web aims to promote understanding of United States geography among middle school students by sending them on fact-finding missions to state and other web sites. The module especially stresses the relationship between geographic features of a region and its human activities (especially economic and recreational activities).





Rationale

Through this curriculum, students will explore the five unifying themes of geography promoted by the National Geographic Society (NGS). These themes are discussed below.
   Americans' ignorance of their own country and of the world will have dire consequences for our nation's welfare, strength, and global interdependence and for the effects we have on people in other nations. Geographic education is vital to correct this ignorance and can give future generations the knowledge and understanding they need to manage the earth's resources wisely.
   Geographic education can satisfy our deep need to know about other people and places, the natural environment, the capacity of the earth to support human life, and to inform our own individual perceptions of places. Thus geographic education requires knowing where things are located, but more importantly requires a system for inquiring why they are there and where they should be.
   Now, more than ever, citizens of the United States can ill afford to ignore their own lack of geographical understanding.
   The current unit is focused on United States geography. Many students in fourth through eighth grade lack basic understandings of both the scale and diversity of the United States. Many students do not understand the different regions of the country have different topographical, economic, and recreational features. The activities of Geoteam are especially designed to show the interrelationship of the topographical features with economic and recreational activities commonly seen in different regions of the country.

For more, see essay on "Geography for Life" by Penn State University professor Roger M. Downs.





Learners

The activities in this web are designed specifically for middle-school students (grades six to eight). However, it can be used with younger, motivated students, or older students who have yet to develop a geographical understanding of the United States.






Prerequisites

Before using the Geoteam Web, students should be able to:

• Read at at least a fifth grade level
• Use a browser to move between web pages
• Be able to "copy and paste" text from web pages to a word processor
• Be able to work cooperatively in teams to accomplish shared goals. (Students who do not have experience with cooperative learning may need additional supervision or preparation.)

Subject-Matter
This curriculum is centered on subject matter relevant to the relationship between geographical features of states and their primary economic and recreational activities. Topics will include:

Information on regions of the United States
· Geographical Data
· Topology
· Rivers, lakes, and oceans
· Mountains
· Elevation
· Climate
· Major economic activities
· Major recreational activities

Concepts and skills
· Interdependence of geography and economics
· Map-reading
· Increased geo-spatial awareness
· Use of the Web to support research
· Information literacy
· Note-taking
· Team-work
· Presentation skills
· Division of labor
· Data collection
· Data analysis

Goals and Objectives

This curriculum web was initially developed by middle school teachers. They were concerned that their students did not have sufficient understanding of geography. This concern was echoed by a report that emerged in 1996 about the poor geographical understanding of American schoolchildren. In addition, these teachers were already focusing on the United States because of general expectations about what would be covered in their grades. They also wanted to introduce their students to using the Web to conduct research.

Learning Objectives

· Students will be able to identify six different geographical regions in the United States.
· Students will be able to use state web sites and other online sources to find basic geographical information about the United States.
· Students will generalize the relationships among geographical, economic, and recreational facts. Specifically, they will be able to describe the relationship between a state's geography and its economic and recreational activities.
· Students will apply the concept of self-sufficiency in making decisions about necessary trade relations between regions.
· Students will be able to make predictions about the economic activities of different regions of the world based on geographic information, and will be able to give evidence from their own research, and to make analogies to situations in the United States.
· Students will appreciate the value of geographical understanding in the real world.
· Students will exhibit effective collaboration skills while working in groups to complete complex tasks.

The Five Basic Skills

Asking Geographic Questions: Where?

Acquiring Geographic Information: Gathering data.

Organizing Geographic Information: Maps, reports and more.

Analyzing Geographic Information: What does it mean?

Answering Geographic Questions: What have I learned?

Six Themes of Geography

1. The world in spatial terms
2. Places and regions
3. Physical systems
4. Human systems
5. Environment and society
6. The uses of geography
   
   

This module helps students to meet the following objectives from the National Geography Standards:

• Standard 1: how to use maps and other geographic representation, tools and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.
• Standard 4: the physical and human characteristics of places
• Standard 9: the characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on Earth's surface.
• Standard 11: the patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface.
• Standard 14: how human actions modify the physical environment
• Standard 15: how physical systems affect human systems.
• Standard 18: to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the futre

The Uses of Geography

The geographically informed person knows and understands [18] how to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future.

Instructional Plan

This module is built on the principles of cooperative learning groups. To read more about cooperative learning, see:

• http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/k12/livetext/docs/cooplern.html
• http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/msh/llc/is/cl.html
• http://www.ecsu.ctstateu.edu/depts/edu/textbooks/cooperativelearning.html
• http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~iascecwis/resource.htmlx
• http://oktechmasters.org/andyb/cooperative.htm
• http://members.home.net:80/riketa/index.htm

Divide your class into four to six groups of 3 to 7 students. Each group becomes a "Geoteam" that will work on the "Missions" together.

Discuss issues of division of labor within each Geoteam. A possible set of assignments could include:

• Team Coordinator, responsible for assigning tasks, conducting meetings, and putting final report together
• Recorder, responsible for taking notes during team meetings
• Archivist, responsible for maintaining a folder that contains notes, printed information, and lists of resources
• Geographic specialist: responsible for understanding and summarizing the regiou's geographic (physical and environmental) features
• Raw materials specialist: responsible for understanding and summarizing the region's raw material situation (both those available within the region and those needed from elsewhere)
• Economic specialist: responsible for understanding and summarizing the region's economic activities
• Recreational specialist: responsible for understanding and summarizing the region's major recreational activities
• (It may be necessary to combine jobs within smaller groups)

Assign one U.S. Region to each group. The regions and the states they contain are listed here:

Alaska and Florida are sufficiently unique that each state can represent another region.

Groups work on Mission 1, collecting information about their region. They each group presents a report to the class.

Then groups work on Mission 2, working on the question of whether the region is self-sufficient.

The Trade Conference activity is optional, depending on the time you have available. Appoint or elect one representative from each GeoTeam to work on a Conference Planning Committee to determine rules and procedures.

Mission 3 involves applying lessons learned so far to make predictions about "Mystery Regions." If you want to know the identity of the mystery regions, please send email to Craig Cunningham.

The report could take the form of a web site for the region. At http://www.alicetx.org/index2.html is a website for Jim Wells County, Texas. The site includes pages on location, climate, transportation, and population, and could serve as a model for each GeoTeam's web site.

Enrichment

• Students will be encouraged to find a place of interest while researching their state. They can visit museums, sport arenas, landmarks or a land form relevant to the state/region they are researching.
• play clue(in place of a report) Students can give their classmates a description of the states landmark/distinguishing attraction. Classmates have to guess the identity of the state. Students can work in teams to promote participation and excitement. This game is a great way to arouse interest in new places, reinforce existing knowledge about states and their location.
• Encourage students to join chat rooms and keep correspondence with another student in the area/region investigated. (Yahooligans offers fun places for kids-chatrooms, pen pals, activities, etc.) Encourage students to compare/contrast living conditions, schools, hobbies, etc. with their cyberpal.

Alternative assessments in place of reports

• Task: Plan a vacation to your selected state/.region. At the end of your vacation, prepare a visual display (draw places visited, create your own postcards, download pictures from the WWW). Share information regarding places of interest, climate, physical land features, natural resources, special attractions or anything found interesting.
• Task: Plan a week long tour of your designated state/region. Older students can use street maps/ relative location (great maps available on the WWW). This tour can be specified to a geological tour, government buildings, or created around a theme. The focus for this assignment is on time, distance, mapping out the best route without retracing ones path. Spending money or having a set allowance can also be an issue raised for older students.

Materials

The following web pages:

File name	Purpose
Index.html	Entry page
Teacherguide.html	Teaching guide
Mission1.html	Provides instructions for learning activity 1, and an image map of the United States linked to official state web site.
Mission2.html	Provides instructions for learning activity 2.
Tradeconference.html	Provides instructions for the trade conference, an optional activity.
Resourcecard.html	A sample of the kind of resource card the participants in the trade conference will produce prior to trading.
Mission3.html	Provides instructions for learning activity 3.
Region1.html Region2.html Region3.html Region4.html Region5.html Region6.html	Include listings of the available raw materials, major geographical features, climate, transportation issues, and educational level related to each of the six regions: Region 1: SteppesylvaniaRegion 2: ArchipelagoRegion 3: UrbaniaRegion 4: Forest RiverRegion 5: GlacierviewRegion 6: The Cactus Hills
Regionprediction.html	A worksheet to guide students to making their prediction as part of learning activity 3 about where there region is in the world.
Tradeprediction.html	A worksheet to guide students to making their predictions about the kinds of trade that their region will engage in.
Links.html	List of links relevant to geographical information about the United States
Glossary.html	List of vocabulary words introduced in the instructions or likely to be encountered while completing the learning activities.
Research2.html	A description of the five basic skills
assessment.html	A rubric for assessing the product of Mission 1.

The following printed materials:
· A copy of the region prediction worksheet for each group
· A copy of the trade prediction worksheet for each group
· A copy of the assessment rubric for each group
· Optional: an atlas of the United States
The following computer hardware and software:
· For each group, a computer with access to the Internet, along with a web browser and word processing program
· Access to a printer for the whole class
If only one computer is available for the entire class, these activities will have to be combined with other activities not requiring the computer. Then groups can be cycled through the computer along with outside activities.

Assessment and Evaluation

Date

Project Description

1= Poor

2= Fair

3= Okay

4= Good

5= Great

Comments:

Appendices
   Resources
   Glossary