Middle

Moroccan Movers: Donkeys and Mules

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: Students will learn where pack animals continue to serve an important role economically in developing countries and cultures, even in this age of advanced technology.

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

An American's Experience in Japanese Culture

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description:  Students will gain an understanding of different aspects of Japanese culture as well as comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences in Japanese and American cultures.

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

Odd Man Out

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: The region of the Middle East is not easily defined.  Its boundaries and included countries are determined by which type of region you are describing: economic, cultural, religious, historical or geographic.  For precisely this reason, it is an excellent area of the world to use to introduce students to the different types of regions that we study in geography.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Jayne Marley

Italians, and Germans, and Poles, Oh My!

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: Immigration is a topic that students hear about nearly every day and one that is probably talked about at home.  Immigration has always been a controversial subject but has led to the diversity of the United States that all of us take for granted.  Christmas trees and Santa Claus came to the U.S. by way of German immigrants, children love to wear green and pinch people on St. Patrick's Day, and even our beloved pizza would not be around without the arrival of Italian immigrants.  Immigration also brought about ethnic densities in metropolitan areas due to housing and job opportunities and the lack of monetary resources to enable movement to other locales.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Jayne Marley

All In

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: This lesson shows how some countries in the Middle East are alike in many ways and is an anticipatory activity to the lesson Odd Man Out, which was presented at Session II of the 2011 World Geography Academy, October 19.   Our perceptions are that all of the countries labeled as being in the “Middle East” have nearly all of the same regional characteristics.  By beginning with those perceptions, it will be easier to move on to the more complex characteristics in another lesson.

 Grade level(s): Middle                 Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Jayne Marley

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: Using Graphic Organizers to Teach Cause-Effect Relationships

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: Helping students understand the complexities of cause-effect relationships in contemporary world geography is best accomplished through the modeling and creation of graphic organizers which reflect such relationships in easily understood, visual ways. Using a scaffolding approach to introduce and reinforce such geographic concepts, such as “human- environment interaction,” (HEI) is an effective learning experience that can be applied to any regional study of the western or eastern hemispheres. The on-going practice in interpreting teacher-created and developing student-created visual graphic organizers, as well as kinesthetically manipulating the basic components of HEI relationships into a “desktop” graphic organizer, reinforces students’ abilities to identify the “causes” versus “effects” of geographic conditions. 

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

The More the Merrier? Global Population Growth and the Future of Earth

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: Students will look at global population growth and make predictions about how society and population issues will impact one another in the future.

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

Spanish Conquistadors: Methods To Their Madness & Why We Should Know About Them

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: Students will decipher what a Spanish "Conquistador" was, identify and distinguish among important Spanish conquistadors while locating their exploration routes on a world map and examine the effect each had with his migration to the new world culturally, socially, and economically.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Denise Aguilar

Human Advancement into the Americas: Who was First?

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: Students will define and distinguish the differences among these terms: migration, explorer, nomad, and descendent. They will examine the reasons for human advancement into the Americas, map the routes (including the major obstacles) taken by the "First" Americans, discover the effects their migration had on the development of the world.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: PASS, GFL             Produced By: Denise Aguilar

Strait of Magellan

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: Students will locate the Strait of Magellan, discover its importance as a sailing route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans until the Panama Canal was completed in 1914, and will learn what its navigation purposes are today.

 Grade level(s): Middle                     Standards: OAS, GFL, C3            Produced By: Glenda Sullivan

The ABC's of Afghanistan and Pakistan

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: The goal of this lesson is to have students compare and contrast Afghanistan and Pakistan.  They will create an alphabet fact book and a digital cartoon to highlight what they have learned. 

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

Read, Write, Debate, Create!

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: The goal of this lesson is to engage students in exploring how every day activities such as tourism can affect the environment in positive and negative ways.  Students create digital movies and cartoons to debate environmental issues. They learn the process of debate and participate in a debate. Students also hypothesize about solutions to the environmental, economical and cultural effects of tourism.

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

Natural Resource Distribution Web

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Click on the image above to download the lesson

Description: The purpose of this lesson is two-fold: to familiarize students with the characteristics of a developed country and those of a developing country; and to acquaint students with the differences in distribution of natural resources in developed and developing countries.

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