Teaching geography: Explain/ apply
Let’s Learn Native American Tribes by Using Geography
Katelyn McCormick
Mount Saint Mary College
Author Note
This paper is for Dr. Smirnova’s Social Studies Methods Class
Let’s Learn About Native American Tribes by Using Geography
Content Knowledge
There are many ways that this project helped me develop content knowledge about Native American tribes and the geography of where they lived. Before I started this project, I did not know much about Native American tribes. More specifically, I did not know a lot of information about the people of the Navajo tribe. I did not know where they were located. I did not know about the five themes of geography. I did not know much about the culture. I did not know about what kinds of clothes they wore or the foods they ate. I did not know about their habitats or homes they occupied.
After completing this project, I understand that people would find Native American tribes in the northwest, southeast territories, southwest and west coast territories of the United States as well as the Great Plains and the Great White Territories. The Native American fact sheet states, "The Navajo are natives of the Four Corners region (Arizona. New Mexico, Utah and Colorado). The Navajo people are still living in their traditional territory today." The four corners are found in the southwest area of the United States. The southwest area of the United States normally is categorized by deserts. The article "How American Indians Adapted to Different Environments'' found on study.com explains that deserts do "not support the abundance of wild game as in the Great Plains." This means that it is not a good idea for the Navajo tribe to be nomadic since it would be hard for them to hunt animals when there isn't much where they live. In the southwest part of country, the Navajo tribe does not have access to a lot of water and therefore had to get creative. They had to determine new ways to keep and store water. The article "How American Indians Adapted to Different Environments'' found on study.com states that "Amerindian nations developed complex irrigation systems to sustain their farms and bred strains of crops that needed less water."
I have gained a better understanding of geographical concepts. More specifically, I have gained a better understanding of the five themes of geography and how they would relate to the Navajo tribe. There are five themes to geography: region, location, place, movement, and human/environment interaction. The textbook Teaching Social Studies in the Elementary School: Communities, Connections, and Citizenship explains what each of the five themes entails. The text states, "location (relative and absolute location of places and people on the Earth); place (physical and human characteristics of places); human/environment interaction (how places are modified by physical and human causes); movement (people interacting with other people through travel, trade, migration, and political events) and regions (areas that are unified by common factors such as government, language, or landforms)." I have learned why the five themes of geography are important. The five themes of geography show students the important relationships or connections people have to the environment.
Things that helped me gain new knowledge about the Navajo were articles written about their habits, clothes, and food they ate. For example, the article "Navajo'' found on bookunitsteacher.com explained that, "The Navajo lived in what is now northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. This land contained peaks, grasslands, deserts, and canyons. The Navajo were a nomadic group of people until they came into contact with the Pueblo. They adopted some of the beliefs and customs of the Pueblo tribe, including farming, making pottery, and weaving." The article explained the clothes worn when it stated, "The Navajo make their clothing from deerskin. The men wore breechcloths and leggings. The women wore deerskin dresses. Both wore moccasins." And finally, the same article explained food the Navajo consumed when it stated, "The Navajo were primarily hunters and trappers. They hunted deer, pronghorn antelope, and rabbits. They raided the Pueblo and stole their crops. Later they became farmers and sheep raisers. They grew watermelons, corn, beans, and squash. They also gathered wild plants, seeds, roots, and berries."
Pedagogical General and Pedagogical Content Knowledge
I do believe that this project helped me develop my pedagogical knowledge of teaching geography. Pedagogical knowledge, as defined by the "Teachers' Pedagogical Knowledge and the Teaching Profession" article, is "the specialized knowledge of teachers in creating and facilitating effective teaching and learning environments for all students, independent of subject matter." It is the knowledge a teacher uses about a specific subject to teach effectively. The textbook helped me realize why teaching geography is essential in the classroom. The text states, "As the world becomes more interconnected through technological advancements and shared connections about economic, political, social and environmental issues, the need for geographic knowledge increases." Teaching geography is important because it causes students to wonder how a location might have impacted historical events or the people who lived there. It helps students develop critical thinking about people, where they lived, their events, and how they're in sight of these events will impact the world differently. For example, people who were in Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor attack might have a different and more significant account of the day than someone who was in North Carolina as the attack was occurring.
Geography can also get students to pay attention and focus on the lesson. The text states, "Geography captures the imagination of students through a focus on exploration and adventure from multiple perspectives and media." A good geography lesson will allow students to use their imagination and put themselves in the shoes of the people who lived in the place they are learning about. It allows students to go on an adventure through different places and climates without ever having to leave their desks
There are also ways this project helped me further my pedagogical content knowledge. As defined in the article "Pedagogical Content Knowledge - What Matters Most in the Professional Learning of Content Teachers in Classrooms with Diverse Student Populations" pedagogical knowledge is "teachers' interpretations and transformations of subject-matter knowledge in the context of facilitating student learning." Pedagogical content knowledge is where the teacher takes the knowledge they know on the topic and makes it more student-friendly to help children understand a topic better. This project helped me improve my pedagogical content knowledge because I had to step into the role of a student and use resources that they might use to learn about a topic. This project helped me realize that, to facilitate student learning, teachers have to find resources that are not too challenging or easy for students to understand. They also have to find resources that will keep students focused and engaged, and the teacher has to assign the task he or she knows can be completed within a specific time frame with little to no issue. The task a teacher assigns also has to have a student-friendly vocabulary. The task also has to be student-centered, where the students are in charge of their learning and only use the teacher as a resource to ask questions.
I have also gained a deeper understanding of different strategies I could use when teaching geography. The text states, "have students label places from geography, history and literature lessons on maps." Using this strategy, I can have students think critically about how their location could have impacted events in history. Another strategy I could use to teach geography, as stated in the text, is "Have students make geographic connections to setting to stories they are reading by locating places relevant the stories in their atlases, using an app, or wall map, or the smart board map." This is a good strategy to use when teaching geography because it integrates geography into an English Language Arts lesson. This way, a teacher teaches two subjects at once and does not take too much time away from one subject and spend too much time on the other.
There are also different methods that I mastered that can help me teach geography. I have learned how to effectively use Jam board, Quizlet, YouTube videos, and Google forms. I believe I used the Jam board effectively when asking my classmates the check for understanding questions. I did not make the questions too challenging, and I centered the questions around something I had mentioned multiple times. When asking the check for understanding questions, I made sure not to space them out to avoid the situation where I gave students or my classmates so much information that they would have difficulty answering a question. I believe that I have effectively used Quizlet when having my classmates complete a guided practice activity. With guided practice, students are tasked with activities ranging from easy to hard. When creating a guided practice activity. The first activity you do should be something students should have no trouble completing in under five minutes. When using the Quizlet, I had my classmates complete a matching game about the main ideas of my presentation. I used Quizlet effectively because my classmates could complete the activity in under two minutes. I also believe that I used the YouTube videos I chose to present correctly and effectively, but at the same time, I also believe that I could have chosen a more recent video to show my classmates. I believe that I used the video effectively because my classmates were able to answer the questions "What is one thing you learned from watching this video?" and "What is one thing you are still confused about after watching this video?" with little to no issue. But at the same time, the video I chose to use was rather old, and the information in that video may no longer be relevant. I do believe that I used Google forms effectively for my independent practice activity. Using the paragraph option, I asked the question, "How does geography influence the Navajo tribe?" I asked an open-ended question that was not too difficult to answer and gave my classmates enough room to write however much they wanted. I then determined how much my classmates understood my presentation based on how detailed their response to the question was.
Here is the video I used in my presentation
Application to Classroom
There are many ways I could adapt this project to use with younger elementary school students. For 1st graders, I would have students read books at their reading level to find out information about one assigned tribe. I would also have them make a poster instead of a Google slide presentation. I would make this accommodation because the articles assigned to me, which allowed me to complete the project, might be too challenging for 1st-grade students to read. 1st-grade students might be inexperienced when it comes to Google slides or might not have been exposed to this technology yet. Therefore, instead of students trying to figure out something they never experienced before, it may be easier to let them use something they have experienced before and let them complete the project to the best of their abilities.
When adapting the lesson for 5th graders. I would give them two Native American tribes instead of just one. I would do this to give my students more of a challenge and make sure that they learn about more than one piece of geography related to Native Americans. I would want to make sure students understand how the geography of where Native Americans lived impacted other Native American tribes. Many tribes could be affected by different aspects of geography, not just where their habitat was.
The national standards addressed would be the third national standard, also known as people, places, and environment. This national standard is addressed because students will be learning about how geography impacted Native American tribes. More specifically, students will be learning about how the location of Native American tribes affected the clothes they wore, the food they ate, whether a tribe was nomadic, and much more. The state standard addressed as found on the “Learning Standards for Social Studies” document on the k-12 social studies framework website would be standard three of geography. The third standard states, “students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live—local, national, and global—including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface.” This is the standard because students will be researching Native American tribes in different climates and can make connections in which they can realize the tribes’ geographical locations greatly influenced their way of life. As stated in the “Learning Standards for Social Studies” document, the key idea of this standard is that “geography can be divided into six essential elements that can be used to analyze important historic, geographic, economic and environmental questions and issues. These six elements include the world in spatial terms, places and regions, physical settings (including natural resources), human systems, environment and society, and the use of geography.”
Generalization of Concepts
There are many ways this project can help students generalize concepts being taught. For this project, students would be tasked to answer an essential question, "How did geography influence the Native American tribes?" When making generalizations, students are focusing on the big picture and not specific details. Students are making educated guesses using the information they know. Students can learn to make generalizations for this project using the "How American Indians Adapted to Different Environments" article. From this article, students can learn the most important but basic information about Native Americans. For example, the article states that southwest tribes were found in locations "largely characterized by dry deserts and does not support the abundance of wild game as in the Great Plains." This can cause students to make generalizations about how they lived. One generalization students can make is that "since it is hot, the tribes don't have animals and only eat plants, or they might have to leave their homes to go find food." The article states that people in the northeast tribe lived in places with a "very fertile area, with abundant resources and reliable weather." A generalization students can make about the northeast tribes is that "they could stay where they are and did not have to move around because they had everything they needed to survive." People in southeast tribes, as stated in the article, were "based around the Mississippi River valley." From this statement, students can make generalizations in which almost everyone from the southeast tribe became a fisherman. The article states, "Moving west, we enter the Great Plains. Today, this area is covered in farms, but before the introduction of metal plows, the soil was too rough for agriculture." From this piece of information, students can make generalizations. Generalizations students can make are "because the land is rough, these tribes can't plant crops, and because they can't plant crops, they will have to follow their food source if it moves."
Students can also make generalizations about tribes living on the west coast. The article states, "Due to the vast number of rivers that connected to the ocean and massive populations of salmon, Pacific Northwest cultures relied very heavily on fishing." A generalization students can make is that because these Native Americans were fishermen, their main food source was fish. And finally, students can make generalizations about tribes in the Great White North. The article states, "Now, the further north we go, the colder and colder it gets." From this statement, students can generalize that since it is cold, snow is on the ground, and since snow is on the ground, it is very hard to grow food. Students can also generalize that tribe who can't grow food have to follow animals wherever they go because animals are another food source.
As I have mentioned previously, the standard used for this project is standard three is geography. The standard states, "students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live—local, national, and global—including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth's surface." This standard can relate to how students learn to make generalizations because the standard focuses on how the location of where people live will affect them. When generalizing concepts, students need to understand the big idea and not small details. The essential question being asked is, "How did geography influence the Native American tribes?" To answer these questions, students need to learn about the food, culture, clothes, and homes of the Native American tribes. To do that, students need to pick out the most important details before explaining these details in their own worlds, which allows for a deeper understanding.
Relationship to Teaching Geography
There are many ways this project can help students learn geography. More specifically, it will help students learn about the five themes of geography. As stated in the text, the five themes of geography are "location, place, human/environment interaction, movement and region." This project would help students learn about location because they would have to research where certain tribes were located. Students would then determine both specific and general locations. As defined in the article "Examples of the Five Themes of Geography," specific location is "an actual address." It is the longitude and latitude of a place. As defined in the article "Examples of the Five Themes of Geography," general location is "where a place is concerning another place." By learning about location in this project, students would be learning about where things were in the past, where things are now, and how things have changed over time.
This project would also help students learn about geography concerning place. This project would help students learn about place because, as stated in the text, "the themes of location and place provide opportunities for students to observe, describe and learn factual information about places and the characteristics that distinguish places from each other." When learning about place in relation to geography students would learn about both physical characteristics and human characteristics. Human characteristics are where people change themselves to suit the environment, and physical characteristics are the terrain of a location. For example, two locations right next to each other might have different terrains. One area might have a desert floor, and the other area might be covered in forest. When learning about place in this project, students would be learning about the different environments in which different tribes choose to settle, and they would be learning about how the places they choose to settle impacted the tribes' lives.
This project would also help students learn about human/environment interaction. Human/environmental interaction is when people interact with the environment to suit their own needs. the article "Examples of the Five Themes of Geography" states, "Human/environment interaction describes how people work together and how they function in their environment." As they would be completing this project, students would learn about human/environment interaction. More specifically, students will be learning about how the Native American tribes used the environment's resources. They would learn how tribes change the setting to suit their needs, such as building homes that have materials found in the environment, such as Hogans, which are homes wholly made out of dirt. Students can learn about how tribes adapted themselves to fit the environment. For example, tribes in the Great White North tended to wear clothes such as coats to protect them from a cold.
As students were completing this project, students would also learn about movement in relation to geography. Students would learn about the relationship different tribes had with each other, and they would also learn if that relationship between the tribes is positive or negative. Finally, students would learn about regions in relation to geography. As stated in the text, regions are "areas that are unified by common factors such as government, language or landforms." By learning about regions, students would be learning about how the places or locations the tribes live influence the languages they speak when doing this project.
Bibliography
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