Geography Lesson Plans

Geography

Electronic Resources for Geography
made in Texas and a great resource for geography and other thing. Lewis Armstrong who made this page is an e-friend, but I would not recommend this page if it was not an everything you needed to know about geography type of site. ~Jube

National Geographic Geography Bee
For those who might be interested in thinking about doing a geography bee for next year.

National Geographic

Smithsonian Institution

Greatest Places Online
Take your students on a virtual field trip to the world's greatest places. Use this well-designed, information-rich site to take your class on a trip from the Amazon to Greenland, or introduce your students to the Okavango Delta and the Iguazu Falls. Each place includes an illustrated page with photos of the area's landscape, people, and animals. In addition to reading information, your class can listen to sounds from each destination and watch video footage of the coolest things there to see. ~psam

Rand McNally
From Rand McNally, free downloadable activities and maps ~Kim

50States.com
good for general info on USA ~DJ

The Mariner's Museum

The Mariner's Museum: The Age of Exploration Curriculum Guide
Teacher guides and student Geography activities are available here to create a compass, astrolabe, identifying parts of a ship, word searches, crossword puzzles and a sea of more wealth. City Net (gr. 3-College)

GeoNet Game
How well do your students know the Geography of the United States? They got 2 hours to find out. There are easy and hard questions based on National Geography Standards.

MapQuest
An amazing resource that will allow you to make a map of your own address. Have students plan a trip to the local library, mall, to their school, to theirrelatives. Maps from countries worldwide are also available.

PARC Map Viewer
This site allows the user to zoom in on any part of a world map. There are links to other map servers and resources.

Color Landform Map of the US
Spectacular landform maps of every state of the United States are available from this site. There are also black and white maps available and a link to more maps and other online information of each state.

CGRER Netsurfing: Maps and References
A very very extensive resource of maps, references and resources on the World Wide Web. It's a very detailed list.

How Fat Is It? (gr. 4-College)
Calculate the distance between your home and any other place in the world and see it visually on a map. Answers are returned in miles, kilometers and nautical miles under the heading as the crow flies.

EarthView
It shows an image of the Earth from the sun or the moon. You can click on any area of the world and rotate it. You can zoom in and out. You can also put up specific times. For example, during sunrise, you can see how the sun "comes around the earth" to start shining on Texas. Or a night view let's you find the major cities in the world through their light output seen from space. ~Helga

Geography Educators' Network of Indiana
Over 20 lesson plans teachers can printout and which are suitable for elementary and secondary school classrooms.

Geography Lessons and Activities. Sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the site provides lessons, units, and activities designed to bring good geography into the classroom. Click on Kindergarten-4th grade,5th-8th grade and 9th-12 grade to find the lesson plans and activities of your choice.

Geography Lesson Plans and Teaching Tips from Nystromnet. The site contains quizzes, lesson plans for the primary, intermediate and high school levels, geography literacy games, and links to additional lesson in cyberspace.

free map software to print out a really large map (about 7 feet by about 5 feet) of all the states, maybe to color and then pin the postcards to. ~Margaret

The Five Themes of Geography - Location, Place, Human/Environment Interaction, Movement, Regions ~Donna

The Geogram On-Line is provided as a source of information about geography and related subjects for students and friends of geography. Its purpose is to help bring some interest to geography through the use of short
articles, features, links, and illustrations using the format of an on-line periodical. ~Donna

Fundamental Themes of Geography - basic geography vocabulary games from Quia! ~Donna

The Internet Geography Quizzes - about a dozen quizzes on various topics ~Donna

Key Stage 3 General Geography Quizzes - select from eight 50 question quizzes ~Donna

The World Online Geography Quiz - photo and information used to identify places This is really a neat site! ~Donna

Geography Quiz choose the area and see how you do. ~Donna

Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System - clickable map and links to information ~Donna

Finding Your Way with Map and Compass You learn to use both and understand topographic maps too. ~Donna

The following links are from the Geography Department of TAMU, our great univesity in College Station. This was comprised one long hot summer day when they did not have anything else to do. I suggest finishing this page if you child is REALLY into geography ;-)

* Online Mapping
Numerous sites on the Internet allow you to make maps just using your web browser. (You should have a current version of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer installed to access these.) Here are some of the most flexible mapping sites.

* ESRI's ArcData Online permits free construction of thematic and reference maps using just a web browser and internet connection

* ESRI's Internet Mapping Demos includes some focused explorations from global down to local level in some places in the U.S.

* GLOBE Program's Visualizations Page offers opportunities to see map displays of current and historical atmospheric data for the planet.

*Google's Digital Earth Program Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more. free download

* National Geographic's Map Machine
(http://www.nationalgeographic.com/maps/) is a joint effort between the Society and ESRI.

* US Census Bureau's new American Factfinder and TIGER map server allow you to create community level reference and thematic maps.

* US EPA's "Surf Your Watershed" map server permits exploring according to physical region, rather than political region.

* USGS's National Atlas contains explorable U.S. data at many scales.

* GIS Data Sets
Many Internet sites now provide data for free download to use with GIS software. Here are some of the national sites. Individual states may have local sites as well.

* ESRI's TIGER data website contains many layers of information from the 1990 US Census information for very county of the U.S. Data can be downloaded for free. There is a lesson online, containing detailed instructions on downloading and using TIGER data

* ESRI's GIS Jump Station contains links to many global and local sites with downloadable data.

* GIS Data Depot contains an enormous volume of global data that can be downloaded and used in mapping activities.

* NASA Global Change Master Directory rich set of data about data.

* US Census Bureau's American Factfinder offers tabular as well as map data down to local level

* US EPA's BASINS website contains watershed data for the 48 conterminous states. Data can be downloaded for free. There is a lesson online, containing detailed instructions on downloading and using BASINS data

* USGS's National Atlas contains lots of data at many scales for the U.S. Data can be downloaded for free.

* Grandma's Attic: Static images to interactive networks Many locations on the web incorporate map, aerial, radar, and satellite images as static complements to their offerings. While unchangeable, these can be useful additions to geographic explorations. Others embrace a host of possibilities. Some locations to visit include:

EPA Environmental Atlas

Portal to Sites

Library of Congress Map Collections 1544-1999

NASA Visualization of Remote Sensing Data

Images from LandSat

Earth Science Image Gallery

NASA Photo Gallery

SIR-C Mission Home Page

JPL Earth Sciences Home Page

NOAA Interactive Weather Information Network

Satellite's Eye Art Gallery

Nighttime Lights of the World