Social Studies · Grades 6-8
World Geography
Every place on Earth has an address. Let's learn to read it.
Hi, I'm Marco, and I'll be your guide for this course.
Geography asks two big questions: where is something, and why is it there? Why do so many big cities sit on rivers or coasts? Why does a flat map make Greenland look huge? How did sailors know where they were with no land in sight? We'll answer questions like these together.
What Is Geography?
Geography is the study of places, the people who live in them, and how the two shape each other. It covers mountains and oceans, but also cities, roads, languages and trade.
To sort all of that out, in 1984 two groups of geography teachers and scholars, the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers, suggested a simple way to organize it: the five themes of geography. Teachers across the United States still use them. Each theme is a question you can ask about any place.
- 1. LocationWhere is it? Absolute location is an exact address, like latitude and longitude. Relative location describes a place compared with others ("just north of the river").Example: Cairo sits at about 30°N, 31°E, beside the Nile.
- 2. PlaceWhat is it like there? Every place has physical features (climate, landforms, plants) and human features (buildings, languages, foods).Example: What makes your town different from the next one over?
- 3. Human-Environment InteractionHow do people depend on, adapt to and change their surroundings?Example: Building a dam on a river to store water and make electricity.
- 4. MovementHow do people, goods and ideas travel between places?Example: The food in your kitchen probably came from several countries.
- 5. RegionWhich areas share something in common, so we can study them as a group?Example: The Sahara, the Midwest, or the countries where Spanish is spoken.
In the original 1984 guidelines, "human-environment interaction" was called "relationships within places," and "movement" was called "relationships between places." The ideas are the same.
Choose a Unit
Each unit is one long page you can scroll or jump around in. You'll find clear explanations, original maps and diagrams, a game, a quiz and questions to talk over with your class.
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Ready now
Maps, Globes and Coordinates
Why every flat map stretches something, the parts of a map, hemispheres, latitude and longitude, and how sailors solved the longitude problem. Includes the Find the Coordinates game.
Open the unit → -
Continents and Oceans
Seven continents, one connected world ocean, and why people don't always agree on how to count them.
Coming soon -
Landforms and Water
Mountains, plains, plateaus, rivers and lakes, and how they shape where people live.
Coming soon -
Climate and Biomes
Why it's hot near the Equator, how deserts and rainforests form, and what lives where.
Coming soon -
People and Places
Where people live and why, how cities grow, and how goods and ideas move around the world.
Coming soon
Three Things to Wonder About
Earth is a little wide at the middle
The distance around Earth at the Equator is about 40,075 kilometers (24,901 miles). Earth spins, and that makes it bulge slightly at the Equator, so it isn't a perfect ball.
Source: National Geographic Education
Zero degrees was picked by a vote
In October 1884, delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, D.C. They voted to make the line through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, the zero line for longitude.
Source: International Meridian Conference proceedings
A clock solved a map problem
For centuries, sailors couldn't tell how far east or west they were. The answer turned out to be a very good clock, built by an English carpenter turned clockmaker named John Harrison.
Source: Royal Museums Greenwich
Sources
- Joint Committee on Geographic Education (NCGE and AAG), Guidelines for Geographic Education: Elementary and Secondary Schools (1984). ERIC record ED252453.
- National Geographic Education, the five themes of geography as described on its 2010 education site, archived copy at the Internet Archive.
- National Geographic Education, Equator (Earth's circumference and equatorial bulge).
- International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day (1884), Project Gutenberg eBook #17759; NOAA Ocean Service, What is longitude?
- Royal Museums Greenwich, Longitude found: the story of Harrison's clocks.
Each unit has its own, longer source list.
Credits
Written by Marco, Jugami's world geography teacher, for students in grades 6-8. Every map, globe and drawing on these pages is original SVG made for Jugami. The coastlines are simplified by hand from latitude and longitude points, so they show the general shapes of the land, not exact borders or coasts.