Essential Question: How do geographers show information on maps?

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students develop map-reading skills such as the difference between absolute and relative location and measuring distance using scale.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: Why do geographers use a variety of maps to represent the world?

In a Visual Discovery activity, students learn to read and analyze six types of thematic maps that geographers use to represent the world.

Essential Question: How does where you live influence how you live?

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students explore how location influences ways of life by looking at population, climate, language, buildings, and economic activity in the five regions of Canada.

Essential Question: How can people best use and protect Earth's freshwater ecosystems?

Students analyze data about the state of the Great Lakes today and apply what they learn about the lakes' current status and future prospects in a Writing for Understanding activity.

Essential Question: How does urban sprawl affect people and the planet?

In an Experiential Exercise, students work in policy-planning groups to debate and recommend possible policies for how to best address growth and urban sprawl in the cities of Portland, Toronto, and Atlanta.

Essential Question: What features make national parks special and worth preserving?

In a Response Group activity, students plan adventure tours to learn about the topography and characteristics of North American national parks as well as challenges to their preservation.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: How do American consumption patterns affect people and the planet?

In a Response Group activity, students analyze a series of cartograms depicting global consumption patterns and gross domestic product and identify reasons for those patterns.

Essential Question: How does migration affect the lives of people and the character of places?

In an Experiential Exercise, students conduct interviews to learn about the push and pull factors that cause people to migrate to the United States.

Essential Question: Why does spatial inequality exist in urban areas?

In a Writing for Understanding activity, students assume the role of exchange students and "travel" to four neighborhoods to survey people from four social classes about their experiences living in Mexico City.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: How do indigenous peoples preserve their traditional culture while adapting to modern life?

In a Problem Solving Groupwork activity, students create and perform dramatizations about five aspects of life in a highland Maya village to learn how they have preserved their traditional ways of life while adapting to modern society.

Essential Question: What causes extreme weather, and how do people deal with it?

In a Visual Discovery activity, students analyze images that represent key stages in the life of a hurricane to learn about extreme weather and how people plan for and deal with hurricanes in the Caribbean.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: How should the resources of rainforests be used and preserved?

In a Response Group activity, students create and present news reports about groups with competing interests in how to preserve and use the resources of the Amazon rainforest.

Essential Question: How do people adapt to living in a mountainous region?

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students assume the role of magazine editors organizing a feature article on life in the central Andes to learn how people have adapted to living in the varied environments of the Andes Mountains.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: What forces work for and against supranational cooperation among nations?

In an Experiential Exercise, students "travel" in Europe to explore the economic, political, and cultural forces that work for and against supranational cooperation in the EU.

Essential Question: How do population trends affect a country's future?

In a Response Group activity, students explore the effects of population trends by creating and analyzing population pyramids for three countries with different levels of growth.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: How can one country's pollution become another country's problem

In a Visual Discovery activity, students analyze images and maps to understand the causes and results of radioactive pollution from Chernobyl, acid rain from the "Black Triangle" region, and water pollution in the Tisza and Danube rivers.

Essential Question: How do physical processes shape Earth's landscape?

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students learn about four major physical processes then use their knowledge to try to identify which physical processes are pictured in various images.

Essential Question: What factors contribute to the success or failure of new nation-states?

In a Writing for Understanding activity, students gather information from maps, charts, and their reading to determine which of the nation-states formed after the breakup of the Soviet Union are most likely to be politically and economically successful.

Essential Question: How do rivers change as they flow across Earth's surface?

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students examine photographs of important features along the Nile River that show how the river changes in its journey from source to mouth.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: How do people adapt to living in a desert region?

In a response Group activity, students investigate three environments of the Saharan region and make predictions about how people have adapted to life in each.

Essential Question: How are women micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries changing their communities?

In a Writing for Understanding activity, students study three women micro-entrepreneurs to learn how they are changing the human characteristics of their African communities.

Essential Question: How can dividing a diverse country into regions make it easier to understand?

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students explore the regional differences within Nigeria by designing an educational Web page about the country's three distinct regions.

Essential Question: How might ethnic group differences affect who controls resources and power in a society?

In a Visual Discovery activity, students examine photographs of the new South Africa and evaluate how much progress South Africa has made toward achieving racial equality since the end of apartheid.

Essential Question: How might having a valuable natural resource affect a region?

In a Response Group activity, students analyze geographic data to answer a series of critical thinking questions about how oil has affected ten countries in Southwest Asia.

Essential Question: Where are primate cities located, and why are they important?

In an Experiential Exercise, students play a game in which they discover the best trading location among several designated areas in the room and then compare and contrast their experience with aspects of Istanbul.

Essential Question: How are humans affected by changes they make to their physical environment?

In a Problem Solving Groupwork activity, students prepare and present "documentaries" on how a particular group of people has been affected by the changes to the Aral Sea.

Essential Question: How does climate influence human activity in a region?

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students work in pairs to complete puzzles by correctly matching a climagraph, a climate map, a photograph, and a list of effects of and adaptations to that climate for four cities in South Asia.

Essential Question: What factors give some countries a comparative advantage in the global IT revolution?

In a Writing for Understanding activity, students participate in simulated Internet searches and online meetings with three people from Bangalore, India and then write a feature article about the impact of the IT revolution on India.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: How can people both experience and protect the world's special places?

In an Experiential Exercise, teams of students assume the role of climbers on Mount Everest, discovering some of the challenges presented by this physical feature as they "ascend" the mountain.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: How does a country meet the challenges created by a large and growing population?

In a Response Group activity, students assume the roles of demographers attending a conference on population as they learn about and analyze three plans to meet the challenges presented by China's growing population.

Essential Question: How does a country meet the challenges created by a large and growing population?

In an Experiential Exercise, students use their bodies and varying amounts of floor space to simulate the population densities of Australia, the United States, and Japan.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: What is globalization, and how does it affect people and places?

In a Visual Discovery activity, students analyze images that represent key stages in the production of a sneaker: designing, location materials, manufacturing, and distributing.

Why Teach This Lesson?

Essential Question: How does a country's location shape life within its borders

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students learn how six aspects of life in Australia have been affected by its absolute or relative location.

Essential Question: How do people adapt to life in an island region?

In a Problem Solving Groupwork activity, students create illustrated maps of one of three island types: continental islands, volcanic islands, and atolls.

Essential Question: How might global warming affect the environment in the world's coldest places?

In a Writing for Understanding activity, students explore how Antarctica is affected by world climate changes and why this unique land is ideal for the study of global warming.

In this Mapping Lab, students work in pairs to complete a series of geography challenges that spiral in difficulty. They learn about the region's physical and human geography and discover and implement the steps in the geographic inquiry process (GIP).

In this Mapping Lab, students work in pairs to complete a series of geography challenges that spiral in difficulty. They learn about the region's physical and human geography and discover and implement the steps in the geographic inquiry process (GIP).

In this Mapping Lab, students work in pairs to complete a series of geography challenges that spiral in difficulty. They learn about the region's physical and human geography and discover and implement the steps in the geographic inquiry process (GIP).

In this Mapping Lab, students work in pairs to complete a series of geography challenges that spiral in difficulty. They learn about the region's physical and human geography and discover and implement the steps in the geographic inquiry process (GIP).

In this Mapping Lab, students work in pairs to complete a series of geography challenges that spiral in difficulty. They learn about the region's physical and human geography and discover and implement the steps in the geographic inquiry process (GIP).

In this Mapping Lab, students work in pairs to complete a series of geography challenges that spiral in difficulty. They learn about the region's physical and human geography and discover and implement the steps in the geographic inquiry process (GIP).

In this Mapping Lab, students work in pairs to complete a series of geography challenges that spiral in difficulty. They learn about the region's physical and human geography and discover and implement the steps in the geographic inquiry process (GIP).