L Butler's List: Social Studies for the Elementary and Middle Grades: A Constructivist Approach

November 16-22, 2014 is Geography Awareness Week. 

There are resources posted on National Geographic Education to help plan activities. 

My Wonderful World automatically redirects to Geography Awareness Week resources from National Geographic. 

This website does not exist anymore - the entire page redirects to Geography Awareness Week.

This website is created for kids to explore Japan, especially the cultural elements. There are pages that provide factual information. It would be easy to apply the information when we study Climate and later culture. There are sub categories for the different aspects of culture. 

There is also a section for games, including virtual culture. That would be of high interest to students. They would explore cultural aspects while completing virtual simulations and games related to Japanese culture. 

The header of the website sums it up: "Inspiring People to Care About the Planet Since 1888." National Geographic is a huge resource for Geography teachers. The website has many sections: video, photos, animals, environment, travel, adventure, TV, kids, news, magazine, maps, science, games, events, blogs, education, and more. I want to use more images from National Geographic to connect to topics. They have always been known for their powerful images with equally powerful stories. I started following NatGeo on Instagram and daily am in awe. Every couple days there is an image that would connect with our curriculum. I also subscribe to National Geographic magazine. They are doing a series on food and modern 'hunger' in the United States, which directly correlates with our curriculum. I hope as they publish more of the series, there will be additional resources on the website that can be utilized in my classroom.

Every Friday is current events day in Social Studies. National Geographic also covers major news stories through moving photo journalism. Sometimes an image can give students much more background so they can understand the news story better. I use Flocabulary and Newsela for the introduction and reading of the news, but will supplement with relevant images and maps from National Geographic.

The original link to the World Heritage sites did not work. However, the UNESCO home page still has many resources. UNESCO has cultural and news resources. The pictures and stories describing the World Heritage sites are interesting. This would be useful when describing the culture of different regions we study. However, the intended audience of the website is not middle school age children. There are complex topics and long words that prevent the information from being accessible by all my students. We could look at the website as a full class to make sure everyone understands what is being described.

The link to the World Heritage sites is actually http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/. There is an interactive map with three different colored dots; however, there is no map key to explain what they stand for. It might be a good exercise for students to look at the map in pairs and try to determine what each color tells you. That would lead into a class discussion about the importance of labeling the map with a title and a map key. The discussion would also include problem solving strategies, what did they do to find the answer since it was not obvious.

The link to the list of endangered sites did not work, so I am reviewing the World Monuments Fund website independently. 

The United Nations Environment Programme / World Conservation Monitoring Centre describes themselves as "unrivaled expertise in collating, analyzing, and interpreting information about biodiversity." The website does let you search by country to see statistics about the biodiversity loss, the amount of protected land, animals that are in danger, and other biodiversity data. This is another resource that could be utilized to highlight the Human-Environment Interaction theme. 

The UNEP-WCMC has one of their current projects listed as a "global map of natural capital." Depending on when that is finished, it would be a useful, real world example of a thematic map to show students. Our textbook has thematic maps in the Atlas, but they are watered down and do not provide the specific examples students want to know about in relation to Economic Activity.

The textbook mentioned the World Gazetteer; however, there was no page found for the URL as published. After completing a search for Gazetteer, this is the closest result found. The Columbia Gazetteer of the World provides descriptions of places around the world, including population as of the most recent census, capital, county, relative location, and historical tidbits. 

During our studies of location and population density the examples provided would be useful. The summaries of the locations are short, so students would actually read the entire paragraph and not just skim the first sentence. Some of the vocabulary is above a 6th grade level, for example "formed by the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers." Some students would be able to figure it out by the context, but not most. 

Another useful feature of the website is the 'Places in the News' section. Students can easily see the geographic data about places that would have come up during our weekly current events conversations. 

GLOBE stands for Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment. The website looks like it would provide cross-curricular collaboration between science and geography on a global scale. It will take more detailed exploration of the website and the projects they sponsor to see if there is a connection to my curriculum. It is on my 'To Explore' list for the future. 

This website has Student and Teacher resources from the EPA. EPA Resources cover a variety of topics: Air, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Energy, Health, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Water. The teacher resources include data, maps, and guides for discussing the issues with students. The student resources include games and activities to learn more about the topics. I need to include more real world data and maps in the curriculum for the study of thematic maps. 

The website is not visually stunning, but it does serve its purpose of providing information about Hurricanes and Tropical Storms, like the latitude and longitude, maximum winds, and central pressure. I can think of three different lessons this could apply to. 

At the beginning of the year when we talk about Human-Environment Interaction for the Five Themes of Geography. If you click from year to year, it is evident that certain locations are frequently in the storm path, whereas other places never experience a hurricane. Many examples of HEI are how people change the environment, this would be how the environment changes the actions and behaviors of people. 

Another part of the Five Themes is location. The website provides tracking positions of the storms using latitude and longitude. The students could pick a storm (like one with their name), plot it, and check to see if their estimated image matches the satellite photos. This would be a real world application. 

During the year we talk about climate and weather patterns. While hurricanes are not part of the climate, they are a weather phenomenon that happens because of the climate in different regions.

Announcement: "The National Atlas Will Be Removed from Service September 30, 2014. This year we are combining the National Atlas of the United States with The National Map to provide a single source for geospatial and cartographic information." This is a perfect and tragic example of the ever-changing digital landscape. I just discovered this website through the textbook and it would provide the students ample practice to create and analyze thematic maps that interest them. However, as of the end of September, the website will cease to be available. I checked out the alternative, and it is nothing close to the National Atlas.

Before the National Atlas shuts down, I am going to download some of the maps for future reference, since they are available in the public domain, but it is much easier to access from a single source than search for them in the future. 

The Census Bureau has a lot more information on their website that can applied to the classroom than I imaged. The most obvious connection is the study of population and population density. There are stats and maps galore, and not just limited to the United States. The data is not just displayed on maps, there are also info graphics and data visualizations, like one that shows the World Cup Population Bracketology, which in no way corresponds with the World Cup results this summer.  

A surprising topic covered in detail by the Census Bureau is Economy. There are multiple resources to show the Economic Activity growth and the corresponding increase in population density in specific areas. This would be great for conversations about Human-Environment Interaction, a thematic maps like Economic Activity and Population Density. 

"Were you trying to find the Oxfam Cool Planet website? Cool Planet no longer exists, but we have plenty of other ways to help you engage your pupils with global citizenship." Yet another dead end with links. I did explore the website I was redirected to. They had classroom resources divided by age group and global citizenship guides. 

The most applicable resource is Mapping Our World (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/mapping-our-world) which contains three different lessons to use with whole group instruction on an Interactive Whiteboard. This would be valuable at the beginning of our Thematic Map study to prompt students to think about the process of mapping and how they can share their world with others.

The World Monuments Fund describes their mission as "to preserve the world's architectural heritage of significant monuments, buildings, and sites." However, I do not see the practical application in my classroom. The only vague connection that could be made is during the Five Themes of Geography lesson, when we discuss Human-Environment Interaction, there is the cause-effect relationships with the cases of sites in danger. Most of the sites they protect are man made and not nature based, so technically it would not count anyway. 

This is the updated link for the resource listed in the book. Population Education does have great mini-lessons and ideas for teaching students about population and the influence that has on the world. Population density is one of the concepts we focus on in 6th grade social studies, especially how to interpret a population density map. The 300 million in the USA resources will help students understand in their world, the population trends. It would be interesting to compare the United States population resources to ones from around the world. 

This unique interactive website works with maps and globes to transform pupils' understanding of the world.

Winner of a Geographical Association Gold award and a BAFTA award for primary learning, Mapping Our World allows pupils to flatten a globe, turn a map into a globe, and merge different map projections.

The nine structured activities come with teachers' notes and are designed for whole class learning on an interactive whiteboard or PC. 

This is a mobile app from the Census Bureau that shows the idea places for people to dwell based on their lifestyle preferences. This is an interesting concept. I think it would be fun for the students to do when we talk about population density, and why some areas have a much greater population density. 

There are maps of the United States that can be viewed and manipulated. However, this does not seem as useful or robust as the National Atlas, which is no longer going to be available in favor of the National Map starting in September 2014.