Geography Themes Lesson Plan: Geography and Migration

*Click to open and customize your own copy of the Geography Themes Lesson Plan. 

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Geography Themes, and supports the standard of understanding Earth’s patterns by using the five themes of geography. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Ask students:

• How would you describe your hometown to someone who’s never seen it before?
• How does where you live impact your daily life? 

Step 2: BUILD BACKGROUND

• Read the description on the Geography Themes topic page.
• Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 
• Have students read one of the following Related Reading articles: “In Depth,” “Trivia,” or “Careers.” Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.
  

Step 3: ENGAGE
Students express what they learned about geography themes while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.

• Make-a-Movie: Produce a travelog about your hometown, describing its location, place, region, movement, and human-environment interaction. (Essential Literacy Skill: Determine central ideas)
• Make-a-Map: Make a concept map identifying the five geography themes, citing examples of each. (Essential  Literacy Skill: Summarize key details)
• Creative Coding: Code a game challenging players to sort facts about a place based on the geography theme they represent. (Essential Literacy Skill:Acquire and use domain specific words and phrases)

Step 4: APPLY & ASSESS 

Apply: Students take the Geography Themes Challenge, applying essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Assess: Wrap up the lesson with the Geography Themes Quiz. 

Step 5:  EXTEND LEARNING

Sortify: Continents and Oceans: ​​Challenge players to sort continents, countries and seas by geographic themes and order them by attributes such as land mass, population and proximity to oceans in this sorting game.

Related BrainPOP Topics: Deepen understanding of geography with these topics: Map Skills, Latitude and Longitude, and Map Projections. 

Additional Support Resources:

• Pause Point Overview: Video tutorial showing how BrainPOP Pause Points actively engage students to stop, think, and express ideas.
• Modifications for BrainPOP Learning Activities: Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
• BrainPOP Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.