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.

The identities and lives of individuals and peoples are rooted in particular places and in those human constructs called regions.

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

1. The physical characteristics of places (e.g., landforms, bodies of water, soil, vegetation, and weather and climate)

2. The human characteristics of places (e.g., population distributions, settlement patterns, languages, ethnicity, nationality, and religious beliefs)

3. How physical and human processes together shape places

Observe and describe the physical characteristics of the local community in words and sketches, using a data-retrieval char organized by physical features (e.g., landforms, bodies of water, soils, vegetation)

use a variety of visual materials and data sources (e.g., photographs, satellite-produced images, pictures, tables, charts) to describe the physical characteristics of a region, noting items that have similar distributions (e.g., trees in river valleys)

use cardboard, wood, clay, or other materials to make a model of a region that shows its physical characteristics (e.g., landforms, bodies of water, vegetation)

Observe and describe the human characteristics of the local community in words and sketches, using a data-retrieval chart organized by human features (e.g., type of economic activity, type of housing, languages spoken, ethnicity, religion)

Use a variety of visual materials, data sources, and narratives (e.g., photographs, pictures, tables, charts, newspaper stories) to describe the human characteristics of a region and to answer such questions as; Where do people live? What kinds of jobs do they have? How do they spend their leisure time?

Use cardboard, wood, clay, or other materials to make a model of a community that shows its human characteristics (e.g., land-use patterns, areas of settlement, locations of community services)

observe and describe the physical and human characteristics of the local community and compare them to the characteristics of surrounding communities or of communities in other regions of the country

use a variety of graphic materials and data sources (e.g., photography, satellite-produced images, tables, charts) to describe the physical and human characteristics of a region, noting items that have similar distributions (e.g., communities are located on major highways)

Use cardboard, wood, clay, or other materials to make a model of a community that shows its physical and human characteristics (e.g., landforms, bodies of water, vegetation, land-use patterns, areas of settlement)

use maps and other graphic materials to describe the effects of physical and human processes in shaping the landscape (e.g., the effects of erosion and deposition in creating landforms, the effects of agriculture in changing land use and vegetation, the effects of settlement on the building of roads)

Draw maps to show the distribution of population in a region with respect to landforms, climate, vegetation, resources, historic events, or other physical and human characteristics to suggest factors that affect settlement patterns

Keep a daily weather log of wind direction, temperature, precipitation, and general conditions over time to explain some of the factors that affect weather in the local community

1. the concept of region as an area of Earth’s surface with unifying geographic characteristics

2. The similarities and differences among regions

3. The ways in which regions change

Identify and demarcate areas that are alike and different and form regions from these areas (e.g., residential neighborhoods, parks, industrial areas, regions of dense and less dense settlement)

Identify and describe a variety of regions that result from spatial patterns of human activity or human characteristics (e.g., political regions, population regions, economic regions, language or other regions)

Identify and describe physical regions (e.g., landform regions, soil regions, vegetation regions, climate regions, water basins) by studying the physical environment at a variety of scales and using field notes, maps, and other sources

Compare the ways in which one neighborhood is similar to and different from another neighborhood (e.g., house size, style of streetlight, presence of sidewalks, vegetation type, and at least one population characteristic, such as age of residents) and explain why both neighborhoods can be defined as regions.

Compare the student’s own region with a region on another continent and explain how they are similar and different

Use graphic materials, primary documents, narratives, and data sources to compare the geographic characteristics of regions of the world at similar latitudes (e.g., gulf Coastal plain in the New Orleans, area, the Nile River Valley in the Cairo area, and the Yangtze River Valley in the Shanghai area)

Prepare a display contrasting life in a region in the past with life in the same region in the present-in terms of population size, ethnic composition, cuisine, or means of recreation-to identify ways in which the region has changed

Identify changes in the internal structure or function of a region (e.g., construction of a new shopping center, new hospital, or new manufacturing plant)

Develop a set of questions to ask senior citizens about regional change during their lifetimes (e.g., changes in transportation, shopping, habits, how people earn a living, environmental conditions) and write a summary of the answers.

1. How to describe the student’s own community and region from different perspectives

2. Ways in which different people perceive places and regions

Make a poster or collage or use another mode of expression that reflects the student’s perception (mental map) of a place or region (e.g., my home town, historic sites, recreation areas)

make and exchange drawings and sketch maps with a classmate to compare and contrast perceptions of the same place (e.g., similarities and differences in details remembered, emphases depicted, positive or negative reactions)

Write a historical account of the local community as seen from the student’s own perspective, with emphasis on how the student’s views and values have changed over time

Describe how different people perceive places and regions (e.g., how children, mothers, joggers, and city-park workers view a park)through the use of role playing, simulations, and other activities

Conduct interviews to collect information on how people of different age, sex, or ethnicity view the same place or region and then organize the information by subject (e.g., medical facilities), type of interviewee (e.g., African-American male teenager, middle-aged female Chicano, elderly white female), and response (e.g., like/dislike, important/unimportant)

Analyze songs, poems, and stories about places to make inferences about people’s feelings regarding the places featured in those works