Geography Activities Geographer's Tools Upper Elementary Social Studies

Looking for an engaging upper-elementary geography lesson? This resource is chock-full of activities you can use to teach the geographer's tools of maps, tables, photographs, and charts! You'll get four activities that explore the different tools geographers use to organize geographic information. You'll love the quality graphics and original articles. Your students will love how interesting geography can be!

You'll get four low-prep activities that can be used together or individually. Each activity comes with teacher instructions, step-by-step classroom procedures, and a checklist for any prep needed.

If you've got high-ability learners, you can differentiate easily by having some students use one of the more challenging activities.

Included in this Tools of Geography Resource:

✅ Teacher instructions and ideas

✅ My Four Tools Activity
✅ Exploring Old Maps Activity

✅ Guided Imagery
✅ Invent a Geographer's Tool
✅Keys and rubrics

Learn More about the Activities!

Your upper-elementary social studies students will love these activities!

⭐My Four Tools Activity: In this activity, students explore four tools geographers use to organize geographic information, inlcuding maps, tables, photographs, and charts. This lesson meets national geography standards.

⭐ Exploring Old Maps Activity: In this activity, students will compare old maps to new maps. They evaulate the accuracy of the old maps and identify ways in which the new maps are an improvement.

⭐ Guided Imagery: In this super low-prep activity, students use their mind's eye to visualize a location through guided imagery. They will then look at the image and compare what they saw in their mind's eye to what was actually portrayed in the image.

⭐Invent a Geographer's Tool: Students will reach the top of Bloom's Taxonomy with this activity! They'll create their own geographer's tool. You can have every student participate, or you can use this to differentiate for advanced learners.

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⭐⭐WILLIAMS' MODEL OF CREATIVITY ⭐⭐
This lesson is based on Williams' Model of Creativity, a model designed to develop the traits of creativity in students. This particular resource focuses on these traits:

☀️ Flexibility - the ability to take different approaches and generate alternate ideas
☀️ Complexity - the ability to handle lots of different ideas and cope with tricky, complex situations

☀️ Imagination - the ability to build mental pictures and visualize possibilities

In addition to addressing standards and providing an engaging and effective classroom experience, these activities will also build students' creativity skills.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. I've never heard of the Williams' Model before. Is that a problem? Nope! These lessons are designed to be plug-and-play. I've done all the Williams' work for you (choosing traits to develop and strategies to use). All you need to do is use the activities. The activities will do the rest!
2. Are these lessons just for high-ability students? No. You can use them with all students. In this resource, you can use one or all of the activities, so if you feel like one is too hard for your students, you can adapt it or leave it out. Only the first lesson on the geographer's tools is required to teach the standard. The rest are applying the knowledge they've learned. You can use different activities to differentiate, if you like.
3. Can I leave these activities with a sub? 100%! I find that great lessons make my students much more likely to behave appropriately for a sub. That, in turn, makes a much better experience for the sub, the students themselves, *and* for me on my return to class. Because of that, I try to design quality activities you can leave with a sub with confidence.
4. It says grades 3 - 6. What standards does it address? Because Social Studies standards vary widely, it would be impossible to list them for every state. This resource definitely meets state standards for understanding the purpose and attributes of maps, charts, photographs, and tables.

STANDARDS:

National Geography Standards:

This lesson addresses National Geography Standard 1.

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