“What is Geography” Lesson Plan and Activities
Introducing your students to geography starts with teaching them about the field of geography. This geography lesson plan will help your students connect the study of geography to their lives. As teachers, we often dive into the content of a unit without giving students a birds-eye view of what they are learning and why. We may assume that students are making these connections themselves, but they aren’t.
Many students don’t “get” the point of geography…
Without being effectively taught this skill, students don’t make inferences as well as adults do. If you are teaching map skills during a geography unit, your students may not be making an inference about how map skills and geography are connected. They may not understand how the topics you are teaching in a geography unit (maps, landforms, cardinal directions) relate to the study of geography. This needs to be explicitly taught.
The solution?
Students need a bird’s-eye view of a unit before diving into the content.
An effective way for students to make these connections during your World Geography Unit is by teaching about the study of geography and what geographers do. Explore these tips for kicking off your World Geography Unit (or any unit)!
1. Teach a Bird’s Eye View
Start by introducing the field of geography to your students.
Print the lesson plan and read the article with your students, which answers the questions:
- What is geography?
- What do geographers do?
- What tools do geographers use?
This introductory reading passage will give your students context for what kinds of topics and skills they will learn later in the unit, like how to use a compass.
2. Connect Geography to your Students’ Lives
One of students’ biggest complaints is that they do not feel like their education applies to life outside of school. So, it is important to make sure you make this connection explicit.
Maybe one or two students will go on to study geography or a related field, but most likely, geography is a life skill for your students, rather than a professional skill. They will use the skills they learn in geography, like spatial awareness, implicitly.
Here are some ways that people use geography skills in their daily lives:
- Navigating roads using a GPS, while building skills to navigate if it’s not working
- Reading road signs using the cardinal and intermediate directions, like I35 North
- Memorizing addresses for safety
- Recognizing continents, regions, and countries in the news and having context for where they are
- Understanding the general scope of Earth, like how big a continent is versus a country
- Knowing how population density and infrastructure impact urban versus rural life
- Interpreting maps, like elevation changes and water availability, when hiking or traveling
- Developing spatial awareness for how far something is on a map versus in real life
3. Make Your Lesson Hands-On
Making an introductory lesson tactical can help engage students in the unit from the very beginning.
When teaching geography, I like to bring tools that students can explore with their hands. Some tools you can share with students are:
- Your phone’s compass
- A traditional compass
- Maps (like road maps or trail maps)
- A globe
- An atlas
You can even show students this video from NASA Science for Kids to understand how GPS knows where you are!
Try our method for introducing a new topic of study, like geography, using our free “What is Geography” lesson plan for kids. This lesson plan is ideal for second grade, third grade, and fourth grade. Download your own copy below.