5 THEMES OF GEOGRAPHY

The Five Themes were developed by the National Council for Geographic Education to provide an organizing framework for the presentation of geographic materials.

Location:

A location can be Relative or Absolute. Relative locations are described by landmarks, time, direction or distance from one place to another and may associate a particular place with another. An absolute location is latitude and longitude (a global location) or a street address (local location).

Place:

Places have both human and physical characteristics. Physical characteristics include mountains, rivers, beaches, wildlife, and soil.

Human characteristics describe the people that occupy a place, and how they change their environment (i.e., buildings, roads, and culture).

Human/environment interaction:

Human/environment interaction deals with how humans modify, adapt, and depend on the environment.

Movement:

Movement includes learning about major modes of transportation, an area's major exports and imports, and ways people communicate.

Region:

A region is the basic unit of study in geography and is defined as an area that displays a coherent government, language, landform, climate, or situation. Regions help us group places together to better understand its relationship to other places.

5 Features of a map:

1. Scale: shows distance from one location to the next.

2. Title: Tells what the map is showing.

3. Grid lines: shows location on a map.

a. Longitude/latitude

4. Compass: shows direction

5. Key/legend/index: tells what symbols stand for on a map.