LEARN NC

K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

The shape of things to come

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/13/g68/
shapethings.html

A lesson plan for Grades 6–7 Social Studies

Provider: National Geographic

About this resource

Appropriate grades
6–7
Subjects
social studies (geography, global education), teaching methods (discussions)
Provider
National Geographic

Legal

Creative Commons License

This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.

In this Xpeditions lesson, students explore the shapes of countries in order to better interpret the elements of conflict and cooperation in historical and current events, to increase the sophistication of their mental maps, and to weigh the significance of a country's relative location. Activities in this lesson engage students in whole class discussion and development of map-reading skills.

Students will:

  • understand some of the factors that affect the cohesiveness and integration of countries; and
  • be able to identify, classify, and explain ways in which a country's borders might affect its political cohesiveness.

Xpeditions provides detailed directions for completing the lesson, suggestions for assessment and extension activities, discussion questions, and links to helpful web resources.

North Carolina Curriculum Alignment

Social Studies (2003)

Grade 6

  • Goal 1: The learner will use the five themes of geography and geographic tools to answer geographic questions and analyze geographic concepts.
    • Objective 1.01: Create maps, charts, graphs, databases, and models as tools to illustrate information about different people, places and regions in South America and Europe.
    • Objective 1.02: Generate, interpret, and manipulate information from tools such as maps, globes,charts, graphs, databases, and models to pose and answer questions about space and place, environment and society, and spatial dynamics and connections.
    • Objective 1.03: Use tools such as maps, globes, graphs, charts, databases, models, and artifacts to compare data on different countries of South America and Europe and to identify patterns as well as similarities and differences among them.

Grade 7

  • Goal 1: The learner will use the five themes of geography and geographic tools to answer geographic questions and analyze geographic concepts.
    • Objective 1.01: Create maps, charts, graphs, databases, and models as tools to illustrate information about different people, places and regions in Africa, Asia, and Australia.
    • Objective 1.02: Generate, interpret, and manipulate information from tools such as maps, globes, charts, graphs, databases, and models to pose and answer questions about space and place, environment and society, and spatial dynamics and connections.
    • Objective 1.03: Use tools such as maps, globes, graphs, charts, databases, models, and artifacts to compare data on different countries of Africa, Asia, and Australia and to identify patterns as well as similarities and differences.