Juggling Your Curriculum to Make Time for Geography

Juggling Your Curriculum

For a World of Learning

Geography Standards

Reading and

Writing Standards

21st Century Skills

Lorrie Stockwell

National Geographic Society Teacher Consultant

Colorado Geographic Alliance Teacher Consultant

Finding time for all of the things we need to teach is not an easy task. That makes it even more important to use each teachable moment to give students the geographic framework and literacy skills they need to understand their world and be effective 21st Century learners.

Colorado Model Content Standards for Geography Colorado Department of Education

1. Students know how to use and construct maps, globes, and other geographic tools to locate and derive information about people, places, and environments.

2. Students know the physical and human characteristics of places, and use this knowledge to define and study regions and their patterns of change.

3. Students understand how physical processes shape Earth’s surface patterns and systems.

4. Students understand how economic, political, cultural, and social processes interact to shape patterns of human populations, interdependence, cooperation, and conflict.

5. Students understand the effects of interactions between human and physical systems and the changes in meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources.

6. Students apply knowledge of people, places, and environments to understand the past and present and to plan for the future.

Colorado Model Content Standards for Reading and Writing Colorado Department of Education

1. Students read and understand a variety of materials.

2. Students write and speak for a variety of purposes and audiences.

3. Students write and speak using conventional grammar, usage, sentence structure, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.

4. Students apply thinking skills to their reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing.

5. Students read to locate, select, and make use of relevant information from a variety of media, reference, and technological sources.

6. Students read and recognize literature as a record of human experience.

Standards for the 21st Century Learner

American Association for School Librarians

1. Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge;

2. Draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge;

3. Share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society;

4. Pursue personal and aesthetic growth.

How to choose a good book for literacy and geography:

Purpose

Title

Author

Illustrator

Synopsis

Big question

Geography Standard 1

Me on the Map

Joan Sweeney

Annette Cable

*A child describes how her room, her house, her town, her state, and her country become part of a map of her world.

How do we represent places on a map?

Geography Standard 2

The House on Maple Street

Bonnie Pryor

Beth Peck

*During the course of three hundred years, many people have passed by or lived on the spot now occupied by a house numbered 107 Maple Street.

How does a place change over time?

Geography Standard 3

Paddle to the Sea

Holling Clancy Holling

*A young Indian boy carves a canoe and travels through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.

How were the Great Lakes formed?

Geography Standard 4

The Village of Round and Square Houses

Ann Grifalconi

*A grandmother explains to her listeners why in their village on the side of a volcano the men live in square houses and the women in round ones.

How can an event be the precipitating event that brings about a custom?

Geography Standard 5

This Is the Way We Go to School

Edith Baer

Steve Bjorkman

*Describes, in text and illustrations, the many different modes of transportation children all over the world use to get to school.

Why do children in different places use different kinds of transportation to get to school?

Geography Standard 6

Window

Jeannie Baker

*Chronicles the events and changes in a young boy's life and in his environment, from babyhood to grownup, through wordless scenes observed from the window of his room.

How do places change over time?

Connection to literacy program

Grandfather’s Journey

Allen Say

A Japanese American man recounts his grandfather's journey to America which he later also undertakes, and the feelings of being torn by a love for two different countries.

How do people feel when they move to another country?

Format

A My Name Is Alice

Carol Bayer

Steven Kellogg

The well-known jump rope ditty which is built on letters of the alphabet is illustrated with animals from all over the world.

What is the difference between a city, state, and country?

Genre

C is for Centennial: A Colorado Alphabet

Louise Doak Whitney

Helle Urban

Presents information about the state of Colorado in an alphabetical arrangement.

What is important about Colorado?

Author or illustrator

Ben’s Dream

Chris Van Allsburg

A boy travels around the world in his dreams.

What makes a structure become a landmark?

Connection to curriculum

A Drop Around the World

Barbara Shaw McKinney

Michael S. Maydak

*Presents the water cycle through the journey of a raindrop around the world, in sky, on land, underground, and in the sea, in its liquid, solid, and vapor forms.

How does water travel around the world?

Multi-cultural

This Is My House

Arthur Dorros

Shows houses all around the world.

Why are houses different in different places?

A book you love

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(* from Barnes and Nobel website)