LEARN NC

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

Regions of Nepal: A virtual trek

This lesson for grade seven helps students understand the connections between geography and culture. Students experience a virtual trek through the different regions of Nepal, conduct research about the ethnic groups living in each region, and maintain travel logs documenting what they've learned.

A lesson plan for grade 7 Social Studies

By Edie McDowell

Naudanda, Nepal with houses on two sides of a trail

The town of Naudanda in Nepal. (Photograph by Margery H. Freeman. More about the photograph)

Learn more

  • Nepal This site has information about the geography, climate, festivals, and ethnic groups of Nepal.
  • Where Is Nepal? From the Visit Nepal website, this page provides a helpful visualization of Nepal's location, showing it on a world map, a map of Asia, and finally a map of the country.
  • Embassy of Nepal The website of the Embassy of Nepal in Washington, DC has information on tourism and trade in Nepal, as well as links to other useful sites about the country.
  • Nepal: Changed For Good, For Bad, Forever Excerpt from a National Geographic article about the changes Nepal has seen over the past 40 years.

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This lesson takes seventh-grade students on a virtual trek through Nepal’s three distinct regions in search of cultural and environmental clues which exemplify the connection between geography and society. Students will explore three distinct regions of Nepal, creating maps of their journeys and documenting notes about the various tribes, geographical features, climates, natural resources, flora and fauna, sacred and historical sites, and artifacts that they encounter along the way. In addition to learning about Nepal’s land and its people, students may also create a travel log with text and illustrations to share what they have learned about Nepal.

Learning outcomes

Students will:

  • explore the diverse and extreme environments of Nepal through Google Earth’s satellite imagery and photographs
  • make observations about Nepal’s diversity of life through the analysis of various photographs
  • create original, first-person, point-of-view travel logs based on facts and observations about Nepal’s climate and culture to share with an audience of peers

Teacher preparation

Time required for lesson

Approximately seven 60-minute class periods (Note: Class time required may be significantly reduced by assigning travel log and mapping project as homework.)

Materials needed

Pre-activities

This lesson is intended to supplement a larger study of Asian geography, natural history, history, culture, and arts.

Teachers should prepare to support students in their investigation of Nepal by reading a selection of the online research materials and other resources suggested in this lesson. Sites such as the CIA World Factbook offer a concise and comprehensive overview of Nepal’s physical environment and cultural characteristics. Before completing these activities, teachers should explore each site to familiarize themselves with the content, method, and process of navigating the web-based media resources.

Activities

Activity one

  1. Help students locate Nepal on a map or Google Earth and discuss basic facts such as regions, climate, culture, and language groups. Have students read the general information about Nepal from the CIA World Factbook.
  2. After reading the general information about Nepal, go back to the government section of the page, and look at the data about the city of Kathmandu. Select and copy the coordinates: (27 43 N, 85 19 E). Open Google Earth and paste these coordinates in the “Find” box. Click “Go To” and you will be taken to central Kathmandu in Nepal.
  3. From this pinpointed spot, take a virtual reality tour of the city and its valley. Click options to see 3D topography, landmarks, buildings, and an assortment of traveler-submitted images with tags and text. (Note: You can pinpoint spots to return to on a guided class tour by using the placemark option. Experiment with typing in the names of the seven highest peaks and follow a tour of the Himalayas. This virtual tour can be replicated to introduce students to the unique and amazing geography of Nepal. Supervision of student-directed tours is recommended to ensure that photographs selected for viewing are appropriate and worthwhile. Pinpointing specific sites and images in advance works best. You can return to your placemarks if you save them in “Favorite Places” before closing Google Earth.)
  4. After reviewing the information in the CIA World Factbook and exploring Nepal’s terrain in the satellite virtual reality of Google Earth, students should be able to discuss these questions:
    • What conclusions can you draw about the physical characteristics and features of Nepal? Consider extremes in elevation and terrain.
    • Define “landlocked.”
    • What countries border Nepal?
    • Based upon your observations of the terrain, what would be the most practical mode(s) of transportation to use in Nepal? What species of flora and fauna would you expect to find living in Nepal? What sorts of jobs would you expect people to have? What sorts of shelters would they live in?
    Use student-generated answers and ideas to create a wall-chart-sized KWL graphic organizer of detailed answers and related observations for future reference. This information can be recorded in the “Know” column of the KWL chart, and used as a model for students in their subsequent team research.

Actvity two

  1. Review the map of Nepal available in the CIA World Factbook.
  2. Tell students that they will be put “on assignment” to cover a specific region of Nepal. Groups of students assigned to each distinct area will work together to locate information, analyze their research, and formulate conclusions about the connections between environment and culture.
  3. Hand out copies of the “On Assignment in Nepal” letter and the KWL chart. Go over the instructions.
  4. If time permits, visit National Geographic’s “Trekking Nepal: Himalayan Travelogue.” The site documents the sights, sounds, and stories encountered by Lauri Hafvenstein’s in her 16-day, 60-mile trek through Nepal in 2000. (This site may be bookmarked for reference as students conduct their individual research.)

Activity three

  1. Have each student randomly draw a card with one of the three geographical words: ALPINE, TEMPERATE, or SUBTROPICAL. (Option: unlabeled colored strips of paper corresponding to the light blue, green, and yellow of the chart may be used to save time. Students will need to write the words ALPINE, TEMPERATE, and SUBTROPICAL on these colored strips to correspond to the three regions represented on the chart.)
  2. Students should refer to the “Nepal Cultural Diversity by Altitude” chart on the Visit Nepal website to see which groups of people inhabit the region to which they have been assigned. This demographic map of Nepal may also be useful in helping students learn more about the various ethnic groups in Nepal and their geographic locations. Students may select a group of people to research individually or as a team.
  3. Optional: Create a posterboard-sized version of the “Nepal Cultural Diversity by Altitude” chart for quick reference in the classroom over the duration of the project. Students can post note cards with updates of interesting facts found as they conduct their field research. Attach ribbon or yarn beneath each region so that students can visually connect each new fact with the region to which it applies.
  4. After students have selected cultural groups for research, discuss the significance of altitude. What impact does altitude have on diversity of life, climate, weather, habitat, etc? Students should be able to give general examples. Ask students to begin their research by learning more about the physical characteristics of the three distinct regions.
  5. Ask students their first challenge question:

    You should be prepared to visit your region of Nepal tomorrow. What clothing would you need for this time of year? Would this be the same for the entire country of Nepal?

    Allow students time to locate and discuss answers. Record climatic data for each region in the K column of the KWL chart.

  6. Help students compose more research questions sparked by this “known” information. Remind students that they may periodically need to revise or correct what they think they know as they become more knowledgeable about Nepal. Some suggested web resources students may use in their research include:
  7. Ask students to consider: How might this environment of extremes have a measurable/observable impact upon the development of culture, agriculture, communication, trade, education, language, religion, government? Solicit theories and record them as questions in the “Want to Know” column of the KWL chart. For example, students might predict that they could draw conclusions by examining a distinct region of Nepal in terms of its physical climate, altitude, terrain, and its cultural distinctions (statistical data, including demographics such as: population, education, religion, economy, etc.)
    Discuss ways that they may locate information that would help them identify and interpret distinctions between the regions. (Students should be able to recognize the use of maps, demographic data, reference materials, and websites.)

Activity four

  1. Use the LEARN NC multimedia collection to take students on a sample tour of western Nepal.
    1. Start by playing the audio recording of Kathmandu street sounds. Read the accompanying text and ask students to jot down notes about what they hear.
    2. Ask students to listen to one or more audio recordings of Nepal from the multimedia collection.
    3. Use the following example of a trek from the city of Kathmandu to the terraces of western Nepal to show images available to explorers via the LEARN NC multimedia collection. Have students practice taking notes about each image from their observations and from the available text following each link:
      1. Terraced fields, landslides, and forest patches in Naudanda, Nepal
      2. Forest trees, rice terraces, foot trails, and streams
      3. Locals watching view from Chandrakot in western Nepal
      4. Stone steps along a trekking trail in western mountain region in Nepal
      5. Loaded ponies by the terraced fields
      6. Naudanda, Nepal with houses on two sides of a trail
      7. A village on a hillside, terraced fields and white clouds

    Optional: To guide students through the process of observing, drawing inferences, and asking questions when viewing photographs, you may wish to use the photo analysis worksheet. This worksheet could also be useful for students in individual practice. For example, you could ask each student to complete the analysis for one or more images.

  2. Share observations and notes after this virtual trek. Demonstrate how to cite a specific audio or visual recording using the “About this recording” information to the right of each selection.
  3. Students should be allowed time to explore the LEARN NC collection of multimedia from Nepal independently or in small groups of researchers. Students may also pinpoint regions of Nepal through a Google Earth search and explore the other suggested sites included in this lesson. This process should take about four class periods with daily progress checks in which students post their discoveries and share results. You may wish to construct a timeline for reporting and a final travel log due date. Students should be allowed creative latitude for ways they may share results of their research, but each student or group should produce a travel log and a visual map to indicate the location of their exploration. Allow one or two class periods for sharing, comparing and contrasting regions, and discussing results.

Assessment

Students should be assessed on participation in all phases of this project as well as project components: KWL chart, travel log, maps, and other products. Each student should use a variety of resources to locate information, including geographical and cultural facts. Most importantly, each student should successfully demonstrate competency in at least two of the goals and strategies for connecting geography and culture listed in the Explorer Letter.

Critical vocabulary

  • Altitude
  • Longitude
  • Latitude
  • Coordinates
  • Climate
  • Topography
  • Terrain
  • Tradition
  • Culture
  • Terrace
  • Trek
  • Travel log
  • Alpine
  • Temperate
  • Subtropical

Websites

North Carolina curriculum alignment

Social Studies (2003)

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.
  • Goal 2: The learner will assess the relationship between physical environment and cultural characteristics of selected societies and regions of Africa, Asia, and Australia.
    • Objective 2.01: Identify key physical characteristics such as landforms, water forms, and climate and evaluate their influence on the development of cultures in selected African, Asian and Australian regions.
    • Objective 2.02: Describe factors that influence changes in distribution patterns of population, resources, and climate in selected regions of Africa, Asia, and Australia and evaluate their impact on the environment.

  • North Carolina Essential Standards

    • Social Studies (2010)

      • Grade 7

        • 7.G.1 Understand how geography, demographic trends, and environmental conditions shape modern societies and regions. 7.G.1.1 Explain how environmental conditions and human response to those conditions influence modern societies and regions (e.g. natural barriers,...
        • 7.G.2 Apply the tools of a geographer to understand modern societies and regions. 7.G.2.1 Construct maps, charts, and graphs to explain data about geographic phenomena (e.g. migration patterns and population and resource distribution patterns). 7.G.2.2 Use...

Funding for this lesson plan was provided by the UNC Center for Global Initiatives through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s International Education Programs Service.