Summary
Students will be able to identify geographical features and the political, economic, and cultural functions of a favorite city or town through research. Students will acquire information from their peers about similar features and functions of cities and towns through student presentations.
Essential Question(s)
How is the physical landscape, historical background, and culture of a city influential in its attraction?
Snapshot
Engage
Students think and choose a favorite place to live. Then they identify what makes that place so attractive to them.
Explore
With their chosen city, students individually research their city, identify the desirable physical geography, cultural aspects, and its historical significance. As they discover information about their city, they rank the importance of their information to its desirability for them and for others.
Explain
Students create travel brochures about their city identifying the cultural, political, geographical, and historical aspects. Students also create a 1-minute soapbox speech about what makes their city the MOST desirable place to live.
Extend
Students interview someone they know who lives in their hometown and ask why that person chose to live or stay there using the categorization methods in the lesson.
Evaluate
Students complete in this lesson several products that can be evaluated. The inquiry data sheet, travel brochure, the 1-minute soapbox speech, and the interview of a local person will serve as the assessments.
Materials
Inquiry Data sheet (provided)
Student computer and internet access Access to Microsoft Publisher or to piktochart.com
Chart tablet paper and markers
Engage
Think-Pair-Share Activity — Students are to think of their favorite town or city in the entire world if they could choose to live anywhere, other than their current hometown. It can be a place that they have visited or wished to visit. They are to write the city down on a scrap piece of paper and write the reason that they wish to live there. Students partner with another student and share responses. Then the pair partner with another pair, and share responses among the four.
The teacher asks students to look at the chart on the board or the categories written on pieces of chart tablet stationed around the room. Students are to discuss and categorize the reason they wrote down for living in a certain place. They can talk with their group pf 4 to determine which category their reason for living in a place should be. The teacher might wish to model this by saying, “ Suppose someone wanted to live in Denver, Colorado, because of the mountains and snow. That would make their reason for living there an environmental or geographical reason.
All students are to place their city name and their reason under the appropriate category. Once that is done, the teacher and class can discuss the reasons and look at the distribution of the reasons according to the categories. What category received the most responses? Why might that be? What received the least responses? Why do you think that is the case?
Explore
Students will explore in-depth the city that they chose using an Inquiry Data Sheet which is provided in the Materials list. They will continue to categorize information that they find about their city on the data sheet. They are to gather as much information about their city as possible for all categories and they are to rank the importance of the information according to how that feature makes their city a desirable place to live. Have students include a note on the Inquiry sheet about why they chose that ranking. (Selected websites are listed in the Resources section for the teacher as a starting place for students to research).
Explain
Using the Inquiry data sheet, students are to create a travel brochure or info graphic about their city using the highest desirable features in their brochure. They will include in the student product at least 3 different pictures that depict a cultural, historical, political, and/or geographical feature of their city.
Students are also to create a 1-minute persuasive argument (soapbox) as to why someone should choose THEIR city in which to live above all.
Students will pass around their brochures or share their info graphic with the class while making their one-minute persuasive argument/soapbox speech.
Extend
Students interview someone they know who lives in their hometown and ask why that person chose to live or stay there. They categorize that information using a blank Inquiry sheet and the same categorizations and the class together creates a new data categorization chart from their interviews about their hometown..
OR instead of an interview, students research their hometown and identify information for all categories. They decide which information is most desirable about their hometown.
Evaluate
The Inquiry Data sheet and the student brochure or info graphic will serve as the assessments. A rubric is provided for the student brochure
Resources
K20 Center. (n.d.). Piktochart. Tech Tools. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/tech-tool/2394
K20 Center. (n.d.). Think-Pair-Share. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/139