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Building Geography Competency with Classroom Communities

US education officials were shocked when a survey of nine industrialized nations revealed that fewer than one in five U.S. adults (ages 18-24) could pinpoint Afghanistan on the world map, in spite of its recent prominence in the national news.
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Where in the World Is Afghanistan?
US education officials were shocked when a survey of nine industrialized nations revealed that fewer than one in five U.S. adults (ages 18-24) could pinpoint Afghanistan on the world map, in spite of its recent prominence in the national news. 
 
Meanwhile, surveys of teachers found that although they felt competent to teach social studies, the majority felt that they were under so much pressure to focus on reading and mathematics that social studies as a whole got neglected.
 
Geography by Nature
Certainly, if teachers try to teach each strand of social studies in a stand-alone fashion, there would simply not be enough time. By nature, geography is an interdisciplinary discipline, and it provides a natural lens through which other skills can be taught. This spells opportunities for teachers to integrate geography into their weekly instruction.
 
Five Themes of Geography

Before exploring this idea, consider the five themes of geography that The Joint Committee on Geographic Education of the National Council for Geographic Education and the American Association of Geographers developed to help focus teacher and student thinking when it comes to geography:

  1. Location (coordinates of longitude and latitude, distance from another place or general, i.e Northeast)
  2. Place (differences defined in terms of climate, physical features or the people who live there and their traditions)
  3. Human-environment interaction(how people change the environment to meet their needs and its positive and negative impact)
  4. Movement(patterns of movement of people, commerce, ideas)
  5. Regions (defined by characteristics including area, language, political divisions, religions and vegetation)
Community-Building Activities
At the beginning of the school year, many teachers spend a considerable amount of time establishing classroom norms, developing relationships, and creating the safe and respectful environment in which students can thrive and learn.  Storying or sharing personal information about one another is central to the process of building community.
 
Storying
With storying, it is relatively easy to extend conversations to cover each of the geographic strands mentioned above. The level of student motivation will tend to be high because the topic is personal to them. Students can begin a storying process by interviewing grandparents, parents, or guardians.
 
Parent/Grandparent Interviews
 For a homework project, students take home a list of questions to ask their parents, grandparents, or guardians. Obviously the level of sophistication will depend on the grade level. Interview questions can include the following:
  • Where were you born?
  • Where are you ancestors from? 
  • What language did they speak?
  • What did they do in school?
  • What type of foods did they eat?
  • How did they travel in their community? 
  • What types of occupations were typical?
  • Why did they move? 
Building on Interviews
Many activities could result from interview data. Consider how each of the student activities listed below builds geography competency as described in the Five Themes.
  • Make a large map of the United States and the World, and locate the place their ancestors came from.
  • Compare these places to their own neighborhood in terms of weather, climate, vegetation, landforms, etc.
  • Collect data on how many parents/grandparents were born in state/out of state or outside of the USA; show this data graphically in many different ways; make grade appropriate analysis of the data.
  • Invite parents, grandparents, or guardians to the classroom to talk about the specific traditions that have been handed down to them from their ancestors; compare and contrast these traditions with their own.
  • Research their families homeland. The teacher might decide on a number of the parameters leaving the students room to research areas of interest to them. (Ralph Fletcher’s Craft Lessons has an excellent series of mini lessons on informational reports. Using and extending his mini lessons makes it possible for even kindergarten students to do research but the key is providing appropriate books.)
  • Learn about important inventions, people, or ideas that came from places of their parents/grandparents/ancestors birth. Students might explore the impact of these ideas on their community today.
  • Compare how, and in what ways, their neighborhood has changed since the time their parent/grandparent lived and analyze the negative and positive changes.
  • Compare time zones and think about the impact that different time zones might have on people’s lives.
  • Look at major imports/exports from their ancestor’s country and analyze why they might have changed.
Breaking Bread
‘Breaking bread’ is an excellent theme to use when building community and exploring geography.  ‘Breaking bread’ together is a universal experience. It is an action performed by family and friends.
 
A teacher could look at the ethnic make up of the classroom and decide which countries to study. Parents or guest speakers could be invited in to the classroom to share the bread of their country of origin as well as information about their traditions, etc. Students could then study the cultures behind the bread and undertake many of the activities listed above.
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