The Six Essential Elements of Geography and the Eighteen Geography Standards

By essential we mean that each piece is central and necessary: We must look at the world in this way. By element we mean that each piece is a building block for the whole. Each essential element contains a number of geography standards. Each standard presents a set of ideas and approaches that a geographically informed person needs to know and understand.

Physical processes shape Earth’s surface and interact with plant and animal life to create, sustain, and modify ecosystems.

By the end of the fourth grade, the student knows and understands:

1. The components of Earth’s physical systems: the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere

2. how patterns (location, distribution, and association) of features on Earth’s surface are shaped by physical processes

3. How Earth-Sun relations affect conditions on Earth

Use pictures from instructional materials and hand-drawn sketches to distinguish between different components of Earth’s physical systems (e.g., lithospheric features [landforms] such as mountains, hills, plateaus, plains, river valleys, and peninsulas and hydrospheric features such as oceans, lakes, and rivers)

Describe different climates in terms of precipitation and temperature and the types of plants and animals associated with each, using pictures, maps, and graphs

Construct a model of the hydrologic cycle focusing on surface and subsurface water features (e.g., rivers, lakes, oceans, runoff, groundwater, aquifers, water tables)

Describe the physical environment of the student’s own region and the physical processes that act on it (e.g., weather, tectonic forces, wave action, freezing and thawing, gravity, soil-building processes)

Compare and interpret maps and photographs to explain how physical processes affect features of Earth’s surface (e.g., the effects of climate and weather on vegetation, erosion and deposition on landforms, mud slides on hills)

Compare climatic conditions in different regions of the world, taking into consideration factors such as distance from the Equator, elevation, and distance from cold and warm ocean currents.

Prepare a model or design a demonstration to show the tilt of Earth in relation to the Sun in order to explain seasons at different locations on Earth

Explain how the length of day can influence human activities in different regions of the world (e.g., use of daylight savings time, school schedules in the United States, summer and winter activities in areas north of the Arctic Circle)

Relate seed and garden catalog descriptions of growing seasons to the United States Department of Agriculture hardiness zone maps

By the end of the fourth grade, the student knows and understands:

1. The components of ecosystems

2. The distribution and patterns of ecosystems

3. How humans interact with ecosystems

Collect samples of components of a local ecosystem and arrange them in a diorama model of the ecosystem

Illustrate a food chain or webs of food chains by sequentially ordering pictures or samples of a variety of living things (e.g., fungi, insects, plants, animals)

Identify and compare communities of plants and animals and the physical environments in which they live (e.g., fish and marine vegetation in coastal zones; grasses, birds, and insects in grassland areas)

Write descriptions of groups of plants and animals associated with vegetation and climatic regions on Earth (e.g., the plant and animal life supported in a mid-latitude forest in North America and the kinds of plants and animals found in a tropical rain forest in Africa) and illustrate them with pictures and other visual images

Place pictures of different vegetation regions on the appropriate portions of a world climate map, a world temperature map, and world precipitation map

Use sketch maps of the student’s region and state to show the locations of different associations of plants and animals (e.g., animals that live in forests, animals and trees that thrive in cities, animals and plants that live near the coast, a lake, or a river)

Compile a list of the resources used by the student in a typical day and trace the resources back to their original niche in an ecosystem to understand how humans interact with and depend upon ecosystems

List ways in which humans can change ecosystems (e.g., clearing forests, widening channels of waterways, draining wetlands, setting or suppressing fires)

Describe how vegetation and soil can affect human settlement (e.g., good sites for building or farming) and ways in which humans can affect vegetation and soil (e.g., changing vegetation or practicing soil conservation)