| Series
Objectives
Each
Teaching Geography workshop has five major instructional
objectives:
- Teaching
the geographical perspective - spatial consideration,
including size, scale, relative location, regional similarities,
spatial variation, and human-environmental interaction.
- Teaching
World Regional Geography content - understanding why
and how places with similar characteristics evolve as
distinct cultural and geographical regions; comparing
and contrasting regions.
- Teaching
Human (Thematic) Geography content for the new College
Board Advanced Placement test - investigating urbanization,
rural land use, migration, and other aspects of population,
the spatial nature of politics and land use patterns.
- Integrating
the 18 National Geography Standards, the geographic perspective
and five geographic skills with the geographic content.
- Helping
seventh- through 12th-grade educators enhance their geography
teaching skills.
The
National Geography Standards
This
is a standards-based series embracing use of the geography
standards from Geography for Life: The National Geography
Standards (1994). Throughout the series, we'll see how
the Standards can inform lesson plans and provide teachers
with a guide to content and activities. A list of the Standards
is available here.
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The
standards are important for me because it gives me kind
of a framework on which to hang my lessons…basically
what we do in seventh grade geography for our curriculum,
is we're starting in the western hemisphere and moving
east. So, I like to draw a lot of compare and contrast
kinds of things as we go through the year. So the standards
help to kind of outline the themes that I want to hit
and the recurring themes. So, I'll integrate that, and
sometimes I'll even use that as an objective of one
of my lesson plans.
-- Randy Hoover, Dover-Sherborn Middle School, Massachusetts |
Inquiry-Based
Instruction
These
workshops are inquiry-based. Inquiry is an approach to learning
that involves a process of exploring the natural or material
world, that leads to asking questions and making discoveries
in the search for new understandings. Inquiry, as it relates
to science education, should mirror as closely as possible
the enterprise of doing real science. For more information
on the inquiry approach, visit the Institute for Inquiry
Learning online at www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/.
Within
the inquiry process, students are encouraged to engage in
and develop the following five geographic skills:
- Asking
Geographic Questions
- Acquiring
Geographic Information
- Organizing
Geographic Information
- Analyzing
Geographic Information
- Answering
Geographic Questions
Video
Program Structure
Each
of the eight hour-long video programs is broken into two
half-hour programs. Each half-hour includes:
- Geography
Content: Regional and thematic case study documentaries
with commentary by Regional and Human Thematic Geography
experts. (15 min.)
- Pedagogical
Context:
Commentary to help connect the geography content with
the teaching methodologies. (5 min.)
- In-Class
Documentaries: Practical examples of geography instruction
used to model best practice classroom techniques, showing
how the nation's best teachers teach. (10 min.)
World
regions covered in the workshop include Latin America, North
America, North Africa/Southwest Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa,
Russia, Europe, and East Asia. More information on specific
places profiled and the issues raised can be found in Workshop
Summaries.
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