Page 164 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

136 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
that allow students to plan trips (including the forms of transportation and routes taken) and learn about the places they will encounter along the way. For additional ideas about activities built around geographic themes, consult the most relevant journals (Journal of Geography, Social Education, Social Studies and the Young Learner) and websites, notably NationalGeographic.org.
How will you incorporate the use of maps and globes in your social studies teaching to help students grasp principles
of location, region, movement, human/environment interaction, and place? What experiences in students’
lives can you draw upon to teach the five fundamental themes of geography?
Geography as Citizenship
While citizenship is typically viewed as a political science concept, Morgan (2000) points out that regardless of what is taught in geography classrooms or how it is taught, geo- graphic education is about helping students construct a sense of place as well as belonging and affiliation which serve as a basis for thinking about the world as well as how to partic- ipate in it. This provides the underpinnings for citizenship. It serves as another source of identity and appreciation for all students in the classroom who come from other places and serves as a pathway for globalizing our curriculum. Students should be exposed to big ideas, such as the idea that the global location of a nation or region contributes to its importance in international affairs and that no nation-state is an island unto itself; all have some contact with others; hence the nations of the world are interdependent.
Technology Tips
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of cultures. It usually is associated with studies of past or pres- ent societies (e.g., the Inca, the Masai), but it can be applied to studies of any group engaged in what amounts to a shared culture (e.g., rock groupies, college football fans, elementary teachers). Anthropologists seek to depict cultures as they are viewed by insi- ders, by learning about their perceptual categories and language genres and using these to describe their kinship relations or other societal structures, the nature of and reasons for any subgroups that exist within the larger group, the goals and meanings of the groups’ activities and the social mores and skills involved in carrying them out, and so on. Their data collection and analysis procedures are designed to ensure (as much as
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Many technological tools exist to assist you in teaching geography. Google Earth provides photographs of the earth from satellite imagery and allows students to “fly” over their neighborhood, city, and other parts of the world. Other websites, like the CIA World Factbook and NationMaster.com, provide factual information about the physical and cultural geography of countries.