Stories from the Classroom: Middle School

Climate, People, & Migration
by Ruth Hoogenboom, Harwood Union Middle School


Introduction At Harwood Union Middle School there is a significant geography unit accompanying a basic Early World History course for seventh graders. After surveying my students in 2000, I decided to teach the geography component first for a couple of reasons. First, most of my students came to me thinking geography meant memorizing states, countries, and capitols. Secondly, and much more important, I felt that by providing students with knowledge of land forms and climates of the world at the beginning of the course, it would give us a great arena to compare and contrast different groups of people around the world as they developed their cultures. An example of this might be to discuss why many early cultures seemed to develop in river valleys and to decide if these particular river valleys had any similarities to each other. To achieve this effectively, I felt I needed a geography piece solidly in place before embarking on the rest of the course.

I rewrote the unit during a summer institute sponsored by the University of Vermont. By choosing the theme “Climate” I could achieve the following goals:
1. Broaden my students’ views of what geography is.
2. Connect their world to a much bigger world, currently and historically.
3. Lay the groundwork to effectively compare, contrast, and synthesize geographical data later in the year.
You can see the results of our climate work in Strand One.

I wasn’t satisfied with my unit, however. I found it sterile and very finite. Upon reflection, I realized that what was missing was the interaction with living things! We had talked about vegetation in different climate zones, but the interaction between people and place was missing. During the summer of 2003, I participated in a summer institute sponsored by the Vermont Alliance for the Social Studies and Flow of History. I again rewrote the unit.

After students examine what climate is, what causes it, and the characteristics of each climate (Strand One), I introduce the concept of how climate affects human communities (Strand Two). This strand is designed to help students analyze peoples’ ability to live in the different climates of the world, or their need to leave and find more suitable places to live. The plan is to have students take the knowledge from the earlier strand about climate, combine it with research, and draw conclusions as to what factors could be “push” factors to human populations and what might become the “pull” factors as people make choices about migrations.

We balance social studies content with teaching seventh grade skills. Some skills are social studies specific such as map making and reading, while others are more general such as note taking or writing a standard five paragraph essay. At Harwood we do not have tracking, therefore we rely on differentiation within our classrooms. Approximately 25-30% of my students have accommodations this year.

Annotated bibliography.

Vermont Standards:
6.1 Cause and Effect in Human Society
6.2 Uses Evidence and Data
6.7 Geographic Knowledge
6.8 Movements and Settlements

Time Required: Three weeks

Driving Questions	Student Activities	Student Product	Assessment
1. Can climate or climate change be a “push,” geographically speaking, for human migrations? If so what would be the driving factors for people? (6.8)	1. Teacher directed class discussion on what pushes people to move. (This is asking students to use interviews & knowledge from the last strand, combine it with prior knowledge, and draw conclusions).	1. Notes on family history of moves (or interviews with other people). 2. Notes on class discussion 3. Small groups create “push” posters.	1. a) Participation in class discussion b) Unit Test
2.What constitutes a “pull,” geographically speaking, toward another place or a reason to stay where you are? (6.8) 3. How do you find and use geographical data to justify your position? (6.2. 6.7)) 4. How does one interpret data to form conclusions about cause and effect in human society? (6.1)	2. Discussion of “pull” in family histories (or interviews with other people). 3. Sample, teacher directed lesson using geographical data to form conclusions & justify positions. 4. Working in groups of three, students will use atlases and other materials to gather data about spatial variations in climate (e.g. population data, growing seasons, temperatures, vegetation, and precipitation)to draw conclusions about the connections between climate and populations.	4. Small groups create “pull” posters. 5. Each group of three students will: a. create a specific map on one aspect of the topic, such as vegetation or migration routes. b. research the specifics of their topic and prepare an oral report. c. write a 5-paragraph essay using geographical data to draw conclusions and justify their positions.	2. a) Map b) Oral presentation c) Essay d) Unit Test All above items are included. Teacher review and peer review (using the rubrics) before the final product is due.