MAXimize Student Learning

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Description: Students will be introduced to three key phases (preview/motivation, acquisition of knowledge, and extension of learning) necessary for in-depth comprehension of any type of textual information from both primary and/or secondary sources. By utilizing a hands-on case study of the Quechua rural villages of Andean Bolivia, students will experience these three phases, practicing effective research-based strategies and skills. Simultaneously, students will be given the opportunity to examine the interactions of humans who have positively modified their environments in order to satisfy their nutritional needs through somewhat unconventional means.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Pam Merrill

Water Fight: Watersheds and Water Rights

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Description: Students will examine and explore the current water rights issues while they learn the science and geography of our water systems, including rivers, watersheds and aquifers. They will investigate the negative and positive impact of human interactions with our water supply.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Tiffany Neill

Comparing Developed and Developing Countries

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Description: Students will discuss the differences in developed and developing countries, use resources to make correlations between population and natural resources, and use maps and globes to locate important locations of geographical significance.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: PASS, GFL, CC             Produced By: Susan Smith

World Biomes

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Description: Students will be able to recognize nine different biomes depicted in photographs and learn the locations of these biomes throughout the world.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Lee Ann Harrelson

Maxing Out Geography Strategies

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Description: Students will be able to summarize, using key concepts, text from different sources related to geography. Students should be able to discuss several world regions intelligently, and tell how people make their living there based on the available resources. Students should be able to discuss geographical topics from different perspectives.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Susan Smith

Gridiron Geography - 2011

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Description: Using the Big 12 Football schedule as a guide, your students will learn about the geographical and historical significance surrounding the participating teams' campuses, home cities or towns, home states, mascots, players, and more!

Grade level(s): Upper Elementary, Middle School, High School
Standards: GFL
Produced By: Janet Hall, Lyndal Caddell, Glenda Sullivan, Brad Bays, Patricia Anduss, Ann Kennedy, Bill Amburn, Denise Rhodes, and Eugene Earsom.

Trade Game: Analyzing Global Oil Trade

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Description: Using a simulation game, students will explore trade strategies for a critical non-renewable resource, oil. Students will examine the differences between non-renewable and renewable resources. Students will examine the role Gross National Product plays in oil trade. Finally, students will recognize how crucial it is for countries to seek alternatives to be in place when non-renewable resource are depleted.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Tiffany Neill

Mixed Up States

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Description: The purpose of this lesson is to help students with their mental mapping of states and neighboring states and also to help them learn about the geography of each.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Helen Chaney-Hackney

The Anatomy of MIMAL

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Description: The key topics the students will acquire at the end of this lesson are the path of the Mississippi River from its headwaters to the mouth, and the major tributaries that feed into the Mississippi River.

The facts that the students will acquire by the end of this lesson are the names of the states that border the Mississippi River and the exact location of all of the Mississippi River’s tributaries.

At the end of this lesson the students should be able to trace on a map the path of the Mississippi River, the path of all of its tributaries and label all the states that border the Mississippi River.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Helen Chaney-Hackney

Exploreopoly

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Description: The purpose of this lesson is to provide a review at the end of the explorer unit and/or before the Grade 5 Social Studies criterion-reference test in the spring.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Helen Chaney-Hackney

Underground Wonders: Limestone and Gypsum Caverns

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Description: Students will understand how different caverns are formed by comparing and contrasting the physical characteristics of limestone caverns and alabaster (gypsum) caverns.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Glenda Sullivan

Message in a Bottle: Latitude and Longitude

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Description: Students will become more proficient in finding absolute locations by playing a board game which employs latitude and longitude coordinates to locate survivors of a shipwreck.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Glenda Sullivan

New England Covered Bridges

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Description: Students will discover the reason covered bridges were built in New England while determining how much average yearly snowfall the New England states receive.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Glenda Sullivan

Easter Island

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Description: The goal of this lesson is to engage students in learning about the geographic make-up of Easter Island and to have them draw conclusions about the fate of the inhabitants of Easter Island due to the limited resources to support human society and all its demands.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Teresa Potter

Running Out of Gas

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Description: The goal of this lesson is to engage students in exploring gasoline consumption and energy conservation.  Students create oil product maps to compare Oklahoma to Syria, two oil producing places which are similar in size.  Students hypothesize about effective means of transportation to conserve energy.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Teresa Potter

All-Black Towns: Oklahoma's Unique Historical Geography

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Description: Oklahoma has a unique history.  Most teachers and students do not realize that Oklahoma has more incorporated "historically all-black towns" than any other state in the United States.  In the early 1900s, town promoters selected parcels of land, plotted out townsites, and began building communities in Indian Territory for newcomers from Southern states to begin a new life.  In this lesson, the students will discover the unique and special features the town promoters used to attract the newcomers.  The students are to create promotional materials that would lure someone seeking a place of freedom from prejudice, a place to educate their children, a place to provide a home and provide for their family, a place to achieve economic success, and a place to live peacefully.  In addition, the students should gain an awareness of the human and environmental factors that made these places unique.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Shirley Nero

Oh! What a Clear View! Creating Cultures from Photos

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Description: Many of us look at photographs in books, magazines, newspapers, but have never really asked ourselves, “What do these photographs reveal about the local culture?”  This lesson uses photographs from various sources to create an understanding of and determine cultural landscapes of any given area.  After a discussion of photos, the students will then use this information to create their own cultural landscape from one photo.  In a class presentation, the students will compare their cultures for similarities and differences.  The idea is to find out how many different cultural landscapes the students will produce from similar photos.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Shirley Nero

An Oily Mess

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Description: The purpose of this lesson is to engage students in exploring the national problem of oil spills. Students will draw connections between oil use in their lives and how it connects to their lives.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Julie Guild

Immigration Push and Pull Factors

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Description: The purpose of this lesson is to engage students in exploring the national issue of immigration.  Students will learn the facts of immigration and the problem of illegal immigration along the U.S. borders.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Julie Guild

Physical Elements of the Eastern United States

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Description: In this lesson, students will study unique physical elements of the eastern United States, analyze how this could have had an impact on state boundaries, and develop “memory cues” for geographic (landform) vocabulary terms.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Janet Hall