Teaching Geography

This widely adopted teacher resource and course text explains basic geographic principles and demonstrates how to bring them to life in engaging, challenging instruction for grades K-12. Accessibly written, the book is packed with instructional materials, teaching tips, and more than 100 maps and other graphics. Together with the companion CD-ROM, it presents effective ways to promote students' spatial-thinking skills while teaching them about the land, climate, economy, and cultures of places around the world.

The Companion CD-ROM
The CD-ROM features more than 225 reproducible student activities; a Model Curriculum; PowerPoint slides of the book's figures and discussion guides that focus on important concepts in each chapter; specially designed K-2 resources; teaching notes with links to Common Core State Standards and Geography Standards; and more.

 New to This Edition
*Chapter on geography in the curriculum.
*Chapter appendix on the neuroscience of spatial reasoning.
*CD-ROM features additional graphics, many new activities, and a Model Curriculum.
*Discusses ways to align instruction with the Common Core State Standards.

Phil Gersmehl, PhD,  formerly Codirector of the New York Center for Geographic Learning, is Visiting Research Professor with the Michigan Geographic Alliance at Central Michigan University. Dr. Gersmehl is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a recipient of the President’s Award from the Social Studies division of the New York City Teachers’ Union. He has worked with geographic alliances in 28 states, as well as with similar groups in Canada, England, Japan, Korea, and Russia. He was Codirector of the ARGUS and ARGWorld projects, both funded by the National Science Foundation and other sources and both administered by the Association of American Geographers. He also assisted with three NASA-funded educational projects and one for the U.S. Department of Education. The author of two geography textbooks, he has developed distance-learning courses for the University of Minnesota, a pilot TV episode for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and a number of instructional computing projects for IBM and other groups.

Introduction: Before We Start 1. One Perspective: A Way of Looking at the World 2. Two Blades of a Scissors: Regional and Topical Geography 3. Three Strands of Meaning: Facts, Theories, and Values 4. Four Cornerstones: Foundation Ideas of Geography 5. Five Themes: Meeting the Standards 6. Spatial Thinking: Geographical Skills 7. Three Kinds of Tests for Three Kinds of Meaning 8. Geography in the Curriculum: Surviving Top-Down Educational Reform 9. A Multiwheeled Cart: Supporting Teachers 10. Pairs of Tools, Working Together 11. Helping to Build a Palace 12. Afterword: 47% of Our High-School Seniors Cannot Find China on a Map Appendix: Some Facts Every Geography Student Should Know for Perspective