Purpose: What do our islands look like? How are they alike? How are they different? Geographers use specific terms to describe bodies and pieces of land. Which of these terms apply to Hawaii? Students will investigate and discover the features of their islands.

Objectives: To investigate, identify and compare the various geographic terms that can be used to describe the landforms occurring in the Hawaiian islands.

Geographic Themes: Location, Place and Region

Geographic Standards: The geographically informed person knows and understands...

Standard 1: how to use maps and other geographic tools for information in a spatial perspective.

Standard 3: how to analyze the spatial organization of the Earth.

Geographic Skills:

• Asking geographic questions
• Acquiring geographic information
• Organizing geographic information
• Analyzing geographic information
• Answering geographic questions

Hawaii Content and Performance Standards

1. Explain, use, and apply geographic themes of location, place, human-environment interactions, movement, and region.
2. Demonstrate the use of geographic tools and resources (e.g., maps, atlases, computer bases, Pacific navagational charts).

Materials:

• Jessie's Island by Sheryl McFarlane
  (Victoria, B.C., Canada: Orca Book Publishers, 1992),
  ISBN 0-920501-76-1
• Five sets of colored 3" x 5" index cards with 20 cards in each set
• List of geographic terms and definitions for landforms
• Post-It tabs in various colors
• University of Hawaii Press maps of the Hawaiian Islands - Hawaii, Maui, Lanai and Molokai, Kauai
• Summary Chart on overhead transparency or chart paper
• Styrofoam meat trays or paper plates (one/student)
• Play dough - green, brown, blue colors

Procedure:

1. Read Jessie's Island to the class as a Shared Reading activity. Before reading, have students predict what the story will be about. Also have students predict what Jessie's island will like and what they would find there. Put their predictions on the chalkboard. After reading, go back to predictions and see how many were correct.
2. Divide class into groups of 4-5 students. Distribute one set of index cards,one map and some Post-it tabs to each group. (Each set of cards has 20 cards; each card has a landform term on one side and the definition of that term on the other side.)
3. Ask the students to use a Post-it tab to label one example of as many landforms as they can find on the island map they have.
4. After about 20 minutes, have each group hold up their map and show the class the landforms they found. Teacher/students will put this information on the summary chart. When all groups have presented, have the whole class draw conclusions about what they found.

Assessment: Each student is given a styrofoam meat tray or a paper plate and various colors of play dough. They each make their own island. Each island is made so that it exhibits at least two landforms that were just studied.

Students can be given world maps and asked to find the same features. This can be done continent by continent or for the entire world.