Page 162 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

134 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
introducing and scaffolding students’ learning of basic map and globe skills. However, these aspects of the program tend to be separated from the students’ local environment. In the intermediate grades, units on places and cultures tend to include maps and descriptions of physical geography, so that they do at least communicate basic informa- tion about where places are located and how they support and constrain human habita- tion. However, the texts usually do not draw on the five themes as much as they should to develop an understanding of why places have the characteristics that they do and why humans have adapted to them in the ways that they have. As the teacher, it will be important for you to help your students to focus on the most important ideas about a place, to see the connections among them, and to begin to ask and acquire answers to the “why” questions that geographers ask about places. We suggest you begin with the most familiar places and link to the less familiar ones. Make sure that when you have students from other places both in the United States and abroad that you include exam-
ples from their geographic contexts.
Successful teaching of geographic concepts and principles begins with good planning
and preparation. First, stock your classroom with a range of maps and at least one globe, for reference in locating places and movements between places that are featured in the curriculum (not only in social studies, but frequently in science, reading, or writing activ- ities). Maps and globes vary in level of detail, beginning with simple, often schematic, versions that show and label only the continents and oceans and progressing to the most detailed versions that include information on national boundaries, major cities, riv- ers, mountains, and latitude and longitude lines. Simple, uncluttered versions are ideal for the introductory map and globe lessons taught in the primary grades.
More generally, there usually is an optimal level of complexity to any maps and globes that will be used for particular purposes at particular grade levels. For example, to locate England in a lesson on colonial America or to locate Afghanistan in a current events lesson, a somewhat simplified map or globe that used color coding to differentiate bordering nations would be preferable to a map or globe in which the color coding reflected elevations above sea level and national boundaries because they were indistinct lines crisscrossed by many other lines representing rivers and such.
Simplified maps have been constructed to emphasize many geographical features besides political boundaries, such as distribution patterns for annual rainfall, production of various crops or manufactured items, or languages and religions. These resources are preferable to more familiar political maps for teaching about many geographical topics. The major map companies produce very good sets of maps for use in social studies teaching. Also, the Internet is an increasingly rich source for such specialized resources.
Choropleth maps are thematic maps, also known as color-by-density maps, that pro- vide an easy-to-read visual of how a measurement (of population, for example) varies across a geographic region. These maps can be used to analyze features of regions (e.g., political orientation, race, and religion). Children can make their own choropleth maps quite easily using grids of a defined region (such as the playground or the classroom). Examples of how to do this are shown on various lesson plan websites.
Another aspect of preparation for good geography teaching is thoughtful previewing of the curriculum as a whole (not just social studies) to identify lessons that feature par- ticular places and thus offer opportunities for infusing geographical understandings. This might include locating these places on a map or globe and emphasizing some of their salient geographic features, especially those most relevant to the topic of the lesson. For example, to build background knowledge for appreciating a story about an Inuit family living in a remote area of Alaska, you might present or elicit key information about the far northern location, the very cold climate, the need to depend on hunting and fishing for food, and so on. Also, familiarize yourself with the map and globe concepts and
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