Teaching Elementary

Students to Think
Geographically
Group 5
Vallentos, John Mark
Taule, Jeah
Alde, Jovelyn
Lara, Angelica
BEED II
Teaching Social Studies in Elementary Grades
“ITS JUST COLOURING AND DRAWING MAPS”
Geography is more than just Maps
 Geography is more than just Maps
 Metaphor of map as language.
 They tell the stories of the land and provide the reader spatial information
that allow us to make sense of what we see.
 Natoli and gritzner (1998) define is a study of the space where events occur.
 De Blij (2005) explains that historians look at the world temporally while
geographers look at the world spatially, the concept of space is crucial to
understanding what geography is all about.
 Peter Jackson (2006) geography is not just factual but is also conceptual
in nature; “enables a unique way of seeing the world, of understanding
complex problems and thinking about interconnections at variety of scale .
 Geography is more than just Maps
 Daniel Edelson argues that geography: focuses not just on specific system, but
also interactions among system, where disciplines like biology, earth science,
and political science each focus on physical, biological, and social systems
respectively, geography has always looked at interactions among them across.
 Geography is an overarching holistic subject that provides a skill set that is
fundamentally important for our students.
 Geography as a perspective is clearly within the reflective inquiry tradition of the
social studies.
 Teaching geography as a perspective links closely with developing the
questioning abilities of students and make use of such teaching techniques as
inquiry teaching, values clarification, and individual assignments and reports
that require the students to analyse, verify and evaluate information.
 Geography is more than just Maps
 Some worthwhile short-term learning objectives, this
is not the case with teaching geography as
perspective. Working on the developing a
perspective is long-term repetitive task.
 Geography is a frame or a lens through which you
can organize and teach social studies content.
Teaching social studies with a Geographic Lens
 In 1984, the National Council for Geographic Education and the
Association of American Geographers introduced the five themes of
geography in guidelines for geographic education: Elementary and
secondary schools.
 The five themes of geography are framework to help geographers
understand the complex interrelationships that exist amongst all space
and all places.
 Using the five themes of geography as an organizational tool for social
studies curricula allows students to interpret discrete data and make
connections among the data in order to comprehend complex
information through the lens of geography.
“THE FIVE THEMES OF GEOGRAPHY”
 LOCATION- the positions and distribution of
people and places on the earth’s surface.

 Absolute – the exact location of

something in grid coordinates,
latitude and longitude or a street
address.
 Relative – where something can
be found in relation to something
or somewhere else, usually in
time, direction, and distance.
 “Where are things located?”
 Place -the theme considers the characteristics that
make one place different from all other places on earth.

 Physical – the makeup of the

natural environment- geological,
hydrological, atmospheric, and
biological process.
 Human – constructs and idea of
human beings – land use,
language, religion, architecture,
and political system.
“where is it place?”, what is it like
to be there?”
Human-Environment Interaction – how the physical
and human characteristics of place are related.

 The relationships between

humans and their environment
can be looked at the three ways:
 1. humans depend on the
environment.
 2. humans modify the
environment.
 3. humans adapt to the
environment.
 Movement- understand how and why places are
connected with one another.
 Relationships
between people in
different places are
shaped by the
constant movement
of materials and
physical system.
Obvious evidence of global interactions are
transportation and communications and the internet.
Not so obvious- examples of global interactions include weather
systems wind, erosion, urbanization, fashion and changing
interaction.
Region is defined as an area that has unifying characteristics,
which make it either distinct or similar to other areas.

 1. Political
 2. Socio-economic
 3. Physical
 4. climatic
 5. Linguistic
Teaching about food using the five themes.
 Food is a basic need for humans (we make and eat food on a daily basis.
 Food connects humans to each environment where it is grown.
 Using their list they direct “where in the world is my food from” this map
addresses the first theme of geography : Location
 On the map direct students to draw
pictures of the foods they identified
on the countries that they came
from and show transportation routes
or connections between the country
of origin. This portion covers the
Movement.
 They search the origins, how the
food item grows where it was
exported from and not where they
live. This portions looking at the
geographic themes of Place and
Region.
 Researching how a food item is grown and why it is important
nutritional or economic source for the people that grow it. This
is what we called The Human environment interaction.
Conclusion:
 Learning Geography is important for the learners