WHAT'S HAPPENING THIS WEEK
WEEK OF 10/22 Students will finish their unit on interdependence this week as they complete their "model" map and chart. Later in the week we'll begin to look at our first region: the United States and Canada. We'll start by mapping the major geographic features of this region, most of which will be familiar because of their social studies content from the last two years. WEEK OF 10/15 Students will finish up their short unit on global economic interdependence this week. We watched a series of short videos of how a shirt gets made - from the cotton grown to manufacturing the finished product - and how different countries participate in the process. Students will use these same videos to create a simple model on a world map to showcase this interdependence. This "model" will serve as the assessment for this standard. It will be due on Monday, October 22. WEEK OF 10/8 The 6th graders will be working on a short unit on resources, technology, and world trade. The focus will be on introducing some of the economic terms that we'll be discussing throughout the year. The concepts of things like free trade, tariffs, and interdependence can be quite complex, so we're going to more concerned with what they mean and look at a few examples. WEEK OF 10/1 We're finishing up our very short unit on global culture this week. This topic will come up repeatedly with each region we cover, but this gives students some simple definitions and examples of it from around the world. 6th graders will have a test on Thursday, October 4. It will cover the material we've done on world population and culture so far. Students have a packet on each topic that will serve as their study guides for this. WEEK OF 9/24 Students are continuing to work on collecting and graphing data on various countries' birth and death rates to compare to the averages of each continent. We've had a few technical difficulties that's slowed us down, but now students are creating graphs for comparison. Later in the week, we'll print and analyze the graphs to look for global trends. We'll plan on a test on world population growth next week Tuesday, October 2. WEEK OF 9/17 We'll celebrate Constitution Day on Monday with a look at our three branches of government, specifically Congress. Later in the week we'll get into our population research. Students will evaluate which continents' population are growing, which ones are shrinking, and which ones are staying close to the same. WEEK OF 9/10 Students are looking some global trends when it comes to population statistics and density. We're learning about a number of different factors, both human and environmental that help explain these trends. Later in the week, students will be researching a few sample countries to compare to the trends. Specifically, we'll be analyzing birthrates and death rates of countries on each continent to determine where these trends are and are not happening. WEEK OF 9/3/18 If we can get it to work, students are being introduced to the online mapping tool called ArcGIS. In keeping with our unit on map skills, students will explore this tool, which will allow them to layer different maps to answer geographic questions about the human and physical characteristics of places. The program can be fairly complex so might use a simpler version for now and have students play around with some of the features to get use to adding and removing layers of the maps. WEEK OF 8/27 Students are looking at a series of maps to determine what information can be obtained from them and how comparing several maps at once can help explain patterns in individual maps. We'll be working with these this week in preparation for the map analysis that we'll be doing for our various regions of the world throughout the year. |
6th Grade - World Geography
This course examines various regions of our world in the context of geography, language, government, history, culture, and economics.