Geography

Grade 6

Overarching Question:  How is geography related to civilization?

Essential Questions:

·                   How can interpreting/creating maps and graphs help us to understand the physical and political world?

·                   How do the following five factors influence the economy and culture of a region?

·         Absolute and relative location      Climate   Major physical characteristics   Major natural resources    Population size

·                   How can learning geographical terms help us to understand the physical world?

·                   How can learning demographic terms help us to understand the political world?

·                  How can learning about the way an atlas is organized help us to learn about the physical and political world?

·                   

Geographic regions to study in grade 6:

 

Africa,  Southeast Asia and Oceania,   South America,   Europe

 

Enduring Understandings

 

MA History/ Social  Science Curriculum

Framework (2003)

   Learning Experiences

    and Assessments

The Major Themes of Geography are: location, place, human interaction with the environment, movement, and regions.

 

Geography is connected to the economy and culture of a region.

 

Maps, atlases, and graphs help us to understand the physical and political world.

 

Knowledge of the language and symbols of geography can help us to better understand the world.

 

We can read and create maps and graphs.

 

Reading maps uses receptive language, creating maps uses expressive language.

 

The discipline of geography has a specific vocabulary.

 

Geographic terms are used to describe the physical world.

 

Demographic terms are used to describe the political world.

 

 

 

Use map and to interpret different kinds of projections, as well as topographic, landform globe skills learned in pre-kindergarten to grade five, political, population, and climate maps.

 

Use geographic terms correctly, such as delta, glacier, location, settlement, region, natural resource, human resource, mountain, hill, plain, plateau, river, island, isthmus, peninsula, erosion, climate drought, monsoon, hurricane, ocean and wind currents, tropics, rain forest, tundra, desert, continent, region, country, nation, and urbanization.

 

Interpret geographic information from a graph or chart and construct a graph or chart that conveys geographic information (e.g., about rainfall, temperature, or population size).

 

Explain the difference between absolute and relative location and give examples of different ways to indicate relative location for countries or cities across the world.

 

Identify how current world atlases are organized and the kind of information they provide for each continent and country.

 

Identify what time zones are, and when and how precise measurement of longitude was scientifically and historically determined, the function and location of the international date line, and the function of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, and give examples of difference in time in countries in different parts of the world.

 

Use the following demographic terms correctly: ethnic group, religious group, and linguistic group.

 

 

 Sample Assessments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sample Learning Experiences