Read, Write, Debate, Create!

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Playing with the Global Grid

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Description: This lesson gives a visual way to explain the global grid, with an emphasis on what latitude and longitude actually measure.

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

Buses and Battleships: Latitude and Longitude Games

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Description: Students learn about latitude and longitude through fun, interactive classroom games.

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

People + Places = Geography

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Description: Students will learn about Oklahoma astronauts and strengthen geographic skills through the use of maps, direction, key, legend, map symbols, and scale.

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

Add a Dash of Space Photography to Your Geography

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Description: This lesson plan reviews and strengthens students’ geographic skills. Students will learn to identify, evaluate, and draw conclusions from different kinds of maps, aerial and space photographs, atlases, and computer based technologies. Students can develop use of mental mapping to organize and construct land forms.

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

World Geography Academy 2005

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Description: The World Geography Academy lesson plans cover a variety of topics. This document contains the following lesson plans:

• Solve Earth Shaking Dilemmas with Geographic Solutions - Page 14

• In Between Geography - Page 18

• Man and the Mississippi - Page 23

• The Changing Face of Germany 1871-2005 - Page 28

• Let’s Go Caribbean - Page 37

• Alphabetize Germany - Page 42

• Geography of Normandy - Page 49

• Food For Thought - Page 55

• Images to Ponder - Page 64

• How Blows the Wind? - Page 70

• Natural Resources in Developing Countries Using the Conservation Pledge - Page 90

• Land & Sea - Page 101

• Cultural Symbols Our Scenic World - Page 104

• Latitude and Longitude Shape Africa - Page 110

• Design an Island - Page 124

• South Africa: The Land - Page 129

• Illustrated Geographic Dictionary - Page 131

• Orographic Gold: Teaching the Rain Shadow - Page 135

• Population by Numbers - Page 139

• Conflict and Cooperation - Page 143

• World Neighbors - Page 157

Grade level(s): Middle School
Standards: PASS, GFL
Produced By: William Amburn, Glenda Sullivan, Brenda Runkle, Bob Ehrle, Patricia Anduss, Charlsie Allen, Teresa Begley, Jennifer Babb, and Carrie Hill.