Taming the Dragon: The Yangtze and Three Gorges Dam
Description: China’s Three Gorges Dam generates electricity, reduces the likelihood of flooding downstream, and has increased the shipping capacity of the river connecting the heartland of China to the Pacific Ocean. This lesson will provide students with an opportunity to explore how the building of the Three Gorges Dam has affected various groups of stakeholders and weigh the costs and benefits of the dam’s construction.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Jane Purcell
Conflict in the Syrian Civil War
Description: This lesson examines the Syrian Civil War and examines the complexities of international actors intervening in the conflict, or choosing to avoid intervention. Using geographic terminology, the lesson provides background and examples of terms in action. This support Oklahoma standard 2.4, focusing on conflict and cooperation in the Eastern hemisphere with a case study.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Darren Purcell
Race to the Arctic
Description: The objective of the lesson is to evaluate the underlying causes and develop proposals for addressing the future use of natural resources in the changing environment of the Arctic region. Using the essential questions “How can people cooperatively solve common challenges?” and “What responsibilities do we owe the preservation of Earth’s natural resources?” students will work as cooperative teams to investigate the current changes in the Arctic’s environment, the geo-political issues arising from new access to valuable resources, and the impact current regional conflicts have had on the environment, relationships among the international community, and the economic development of the Arctic region.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Pam Merrill
Russia's Arctic
The Humanitarians
Description: Non-Governmental Organizations play a huge role in humanitarian response to crises in the world. They are often the first on the scene of a natural disaster and provide relief in political upheaval. The role of the NGO, or as the term is evolving, Civil Society Organization is changing, the organizations themselves facing financial deficits, and the humanitarian role finding itself increasingly unwelcome and sometimes in danger in its attempt to help those who need it most.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Jayne Marley
Boots On the Ground: Building Better Classroom Assessments to Measure Student Learning
Description: The purpose of this lesson is to help students prepare for state assessments measuring the Oklahoma Academic Standards for Geography. Participants will receive practical strategies for developing more rigorous classroom assessments, meeting the demands of depth of knowledge and formatting which students will encounter on future state assessments.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Brenda Chapman and Pam Merrill
Subsistence Agriculture
Description: Students often do not know about the tools and technologies used to produce food, they think its just made in a factory and shipped to a grocery store. This lesson will introduce the students to agriculture in less developed countries. Students will learn how people in various parts of Asia (and the world) modify the natural environment to meet food needs.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Jane Purcell
Examining the Evidence: Teaching With Documents
Description: The purpose of this lesson is to help students glean information from primary documents. The modern world demands that students be able to navigate a reality dominated by visual information. Sight is the dominate sense, and modern communications media increasingly appeal to that sense. This means that students need to become visually literate, that is to develop the ability to look at an image, analyze it, and decode it. Students need to read images in the same sense they read text.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Brenda Chapman and Pam Merrill
Campaign to End Hunger in Africa
Economic Freedom
Description: How much does economic freedom determine the extent of economic development in a country? In this lesson students examine geographic and economic data and form a hypothesis about what affects the standard of living in more developed and less developed countries.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Ann Kennedy
Thinking like a HiSTORYan
I Want to Go There! Shaping Landforms
Description: Students will gain understanding of Earth’s landforms utilizing map skills, geographic concepts, visual aids, creative-sensory exercise and hands-on learning with real world application.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: LeaAnn Wyrick
Conflict and Cooperation: Make Peace, Not War
Our Five Oceans: Exquisite, Essential and Endangered
Description: Through exploration and analysis of primary and secondary sources of visual information, and printed and digital texts, students will investigate and discover this interconnected nature, the importance of protecting the oceans, and how what happens to our oceans affects all life on earth.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Lynn Tilley
Changing the Score in South Africa
Description: South African mining companies are key players in the global industry. In this lesson, students will analyze the interactions of humans and their environment in South Africa. They will gain a better understanding of contemporary issues and the positive and negative impacts of mining Africa’s rich reserves of valuable minerals.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Teresa Potter
What's Up With the Yangtze River?
Description: Students will discover the benefits as well as the disadvantages of building the largest hydroelectric power station in the world at Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL, CC Produced By: Glenda Sullivan
What Unsolved Mysteries Lie Beneath Stonehenge?
Description: Students will learn that more than fifteen previously unknown monuments: henges, barrows (burial mounds), ditches, and pits have recently been discovered buried beneath the ground in the area around Stonehenge.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL, CC Produced By: Glenda Sullivan
The Great Wall of China
Description: Students will discover when the Great Wall of China was first built; when it was built as it exists today; who the laborers were who built the Wall; what materials were used to build it; why the Wall was built; problems encountered in maintaining the Wall even today; and new evidence as to the entire length of the Great Wall.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL, CC Produced By: Glenda Sullivan
Oil, Religion and the Global Landscape
Description: The Middle East produces about a third of the world’s oil which makes the entire world reliant on that oil and natural gas. The goal of this lesson is to use map skills to gain an understanding of the effects of abundant oil supplies in the Middle East. Using maps, students will analyze data from a geographic perspective. They will increase their understanding of conflict and cooperation among specific groups over oil and religious differences. They will also identify multinational peace-keeping efforts to stabilize relationships in the Middle East.
Grade level(s): Middle Standards: OAS, GFL Produced By: Teresa Potter