Introduction
This paper involves developing a web quest to help students understand the five themes of geography. It will also help identify the impact the themes have on people’s lives. This paper also describes geography as the relationship between humans, places, and environments. It also describes the importance of economics and its branches microeconomics and macroeconomics. This paper presents the purpose, rationale, values, and implementation process of different identified activities.
The Task
- Identify five themes of geography and how they impact people’s lives.
- Understand the importance of historical events and people to students.
- Understand the economics and its importance.
The five themes of geography include location, places, movement, region, and relationship. They can be explained as follows. Location is the aspect of describing where a thing is. It answers the question, where is it. There are two types of location that is relative and absolute locations. Absolute location is the exact location on the earth’s surface as measured by lines north and south of the equator (latitude) and lines which are east and west of the prime meridian (longitude).
The relative location is less precise compared to the absolute location. It gives a location related to another thing located at a different place. Place as a theme of geography adds to location descriptions. It includes characteristics, physical and human features that identify a location and give it a personality. Relationship in other sources is called human or environmental interaction. This focuses on the way people alter their environment and adjust to it (Web quest, 2010). It looks at how people adapt to different environments at different places in the world. It is indispensable to adapt to different environmental changes that can not be altered by human nature to survive. Movement is the mobility of humans and things. It is the ability to be at a different location at different times. This includes transportation, communication, and trade connections that link people and places. The region is the use of human terms to describe an area unified with some political, cultural, geographical, and economic features, for example, a country, a continent among others (Gallavan & Kottler, 2007).
The process
- Create and describe one instructional activity based on a view of geography as the study of relationships within places, humans, and environments.
- Create and describe at least one instructional activity for your grade level that teaches children to think critically about historical events and people.
- Create and describe at least one activity for teaching microeconomic or macroeconomic concepts in meaningful, authentic ways.
There is a strong link between geography on one hand and humans, places and environment on the other. Geography explains and describes how these aspects are to each other. Every place has its environment and humans who occupy it; therefore, no aspect can do without the other. The students need to understand the environment and how it is affected by human activities. They also need to understand how humans are affected by environments of different places. Geography involves understanding the behavior of different people found in different places and the way they relate to the environment.
Historic events and people are crucial to geography students and teachers because they are a source of information. There is a strong relationship between historic events and geography in that they help understand the current environment and humans as compared to the past ones. Students should have a strong command of historical events understanding so as to know the changes in the behavior of human beings. Geography and history have a strong link because history is the study of the past while geography is the study’s current events, but both aim at predicting the future (Gallavan & Kottler, 2007).
Children should think critically about people and historical events. This involves carrying out research so as get answers to their unanswered questions. Critical thinking in geography involves questioning nature and the world as a whole to get an understanding of past, current, and future activities. Students should critically think about how to research their studies. Teachers should encourage students to carry guided research on their own so as to develop critical thinking. This will increase students’ self-reliance in carrying out research in their academic work (Dodge, 2007).
Economics is a social science that deals with the manufacturing, distribution, and consumption of scarce resources. It is divided into two microeconomics, which is the study of individual economic behavior, and macroeconomics, which is the study of wholesome economic behaviors. It is vital to geography because it has close relations with geography. Geographical activities involve allocating scarce resources, which is a role of economics.
Teachers should relate their activities to microeconomics and macroeconomics. This will help students understand how to allocate the resources available to them during their studies. The students should also have a clear understanding of the economic activities of a country as a whole. This is to relate how these activities affect the environment and other geography themes. This should be implemented by giving an assignment to students that require self-reliance on resource allocation and other economic activities (Dodge, 2007).
Resources
Students should use the following sources in their activities:
- Web quest. Web
- Gallavan, N., & Kottler, E. (2007). Eight types of graphic organizers for empowering social studies students and teachers.
Evaluation process
Students will be evaluated using the following;
- The specific purpose of the activities.
- The rationale of each activity.
- Values of each activity and knowledge they convey.
- A clear process of implementation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, geography is an integral part of social studies. It is wide in nature and, therefore, requires extensive research from both the students and teachers. The themes of geography should be understood by any person intending to carry out any geographical research. This will help in understanding how geography is related to other social sciences such as economics. Students should also have a clear understanding of economics because it involves the allocation of a resource found in the environment which is part of geography. The web quest will be of assistance to students as they will comprehend the subject better. This is because it makes it more enjoyable and captivating.
References
Gallavan, N., & Kottler, E. (2007). Eight types of graphic organizers for empowering social studies students and teachers. New York: Heldref publications.
Dodge, B. (2007). Web quest. San Diego: San Diego University press. Web.
Web quest (2010). Web quest. Web.