ALC GEOGRAPHY
Five Geographic Themes
*Time
to take some notes. Students should start their notes by putting
the day’s date at the top of the page. They should write down
anything I say or put on the board that is important, especially
definitions. I will try to emphasise the sorts of things they
should write down, but they will also have to learn on their own what
is worth remembering.
*What is geography? What does it mean?
*Like a lot of words in science, ‘geography’ comes from Greek.
Geo = Earth and graphia = to write or to describe. Thus,
geography ≈ “a description of the Earth.”
*In geography we study the Earth, and the people who live on it, and
ways that the people and places of the earth are both similar and
different from each other.
*Ask a student how to get to the main Science Hill campus from the
ALC. Try to depict that on the board; when we’re done, explain
that we have just created a simple map.
*There are five main themes in geography.
*Location: This is often what we think of when we think of
geography. Simply put, location is where stuff is. There
are two ways to measure location, absolute location and relative
location.
*Absolute location tells where something is precisely, by using outside
information to tell us how to locate it. For example, the Science
Hill 10-12 campus has an absolute location on the corner of Roan
Street, John Exum Parkway, and Liberty Bell Boulevard. Another
way to express its absolute location is 1509 John Exum Parkway.
This information tells you exactly where Science Hill 10-12 is; as long
as you can read a map, you can find it.
*Relative location tells where something is compared to something
else—where it is in relation to it. In the same way that if I
showed you a picture in my wallet, you might just see a woman—that
would be an absolute description—but I would see her as my mother—that
would be her relationship to me.
*Now that we know where Science Hill is (at the corner of Roan Street,
John Exum, and Liberty Bell Boulevard), we can determine that the
relative location of the Mall, compared to Science Hill, is about a
mile north of it.
*Relative location always needs those two things: a direction (north) and a distance (a mile).
*Possibly introduce latitude and longitude here; probably save it for later.
*The next main theme in geography is place. If location is where
stuff is, place is what the stuff is like. What kind of land is
it? What kind of soil is there, what kind of weather, what kind
of plants and animals live there? Place can also be what kind of
people live there, and how they live off the soil and plants and
animals and landforms. What languages do they speak, what
religions do they follow, what kind of governments do they have?
*Now that we know where the Mall is (its location), what kind of place
is it? What does it have? (Shops, stuff to buy, parking
lots, people who work there, people who buy stuff there, people who
just hang out there)
*The third main theme in geography is Human/Environment
Interaction. If location is ‘where stuff is’ and place is ‘what
is the stuff like,’ Human/Environment Interaction is ‘what do people do
there?’ Why do people choose to be there? What do they do
there? How does the place affect what they do, and how do they
affect it. For example, farmers don’t grow oranges in Alaska, and
they don’t raise sheep in Florida. In Minneapolis, people where
warm coats in the winter, while in California some people wear shorts
all year round. Once upon a time, a lot of Texas was too dry to
farm, but not people have carried water there, changing the land so
that farming is possible.
*Now that we know where the Mall is and what kind of place it is, what
do people do there? How does being there change how they
behave? Do people dress differently in the Mall, do people behave
differently, do people change the Mall while they are there?
*A fourth theme in geography is movement—how do you get to stuff, and
get away from it, and why? What are some reasons people might
move? (Better weather, new jobs, to get away from bad political
situations, to escape religious persecution) What are some ways
people move around? It is also about how different places are
connected—how and why people move between different places.
*How do people get to the Mall (car, bus, taxi, walk, bicycle,
hitch-hike)? How do they get around while they’re there (walk,
elevator, escalator, wheelchairs)? Does the Mall’s location
matter—is it easy to get to; are people at the Mall more likely to go
to places near it than other people are (in fact, what IS near the
Mall—do the students know), or does the Mall pick up business from
places near it (I sometimes go by the Mall after going to Bank of
America).
*The last major theme in geography is region. This is what other
stuff nearby is like the stuff in the first place. Regions are
groupings of things that are somehow similar—either they are all just
near each other, or they have something else in common, such as all of
them speaking the same language, or growing the same crops, or having
the same kind of factories. Tennessee is part of the South,
because we have a common history, and have traditionally had more farms
than factories. Parts of the American Midwest are often called
the Breadbasket because so much wheat is grown there.
*What sort of region is the Mall in? Is it surrounded by other
shops and places to buy things, or is it surrounded by houses, or
factories, or farms, or is it in the middle of nowhere?
*Because Geography is the description of the Earth, though, it can
include almost anything. History is often a big part of studying
geography, because understanding what happened in the past in a place
helps people understand what goes on there today.
*Geography is also important to politics and economics, because
understanding the locations of people and the kind of places they live
helps politicians and businessmen figure out what people will
want. A lot of economics also depends on place (particularly
places with lots of natural resources) and human/environment
interaction (what people do with those resources).
*Have students describe the location, place, human/environment
interaction, movement, and region or other place in or around Johnson
City.