See the sample lesson I have online for this curriculum - Click Here
David Smith, author of 'Mapping the World By Heart' will be sending us some personal articles after the holidays. Until he catches up on his conferences, we will be sharing parts from his geography site. He is also working on a page just for homeschoolers! He will share tips and reviews from other homeschooling parents and will try to get other homeschoolers to answer your questions on his curriculum…thanks David!
I wish you could see two maps of the world made entirely from memory by a seventh-grader I'll call Anne. She drew the first on the opening day of school in September. It showed vague outlines for not much more than the continents, including Europe and Asia in one big bubble with a tiny downspout labeled India. Anne made the second map from memory in May, during the last three weeks of school. It showed not only the continents in sharp outline but also features like oceans, seas, and gulfs, rivers, mountain ranges, and more than 180 countries correctly labeled, with their capitals, and correctly placed in relation to each other.
Anne was part of a seventh-grade class learning world place and location geography by means of a curriculum that is in use all over the world. This curriculum is called "Mapping the World by Heart". The last few years have seen an enormous resurgence in interest in geography as a school subject. The reason for this new focus is the simple fact that students (and adults) seem to have become abysmally ignorant of the world. Everyone has read of tests done in various places which showed that a large percentage of American 17-year-olds couldn't find the U.S. on a world map, couldn't identify their homeland's nearest neighbors north and south, couldn't match countries and languages. The problem is clear. Various approaches have arisen to address it. I would like to describe one approach that I developed and used in my own seventh grade classroom, and that has been successful for a wide range and diversity of middle-school students all over the world.
Geography is not just names and places; geography is enormous -- place and location, yes, but also who lives there, what languages they speak, what they believe, what their climate and lives and families are like, and so on. But early on in my teaching, I decided that the name of the place and where it's located and who its neighbors are is the beginning, the center of the webwork, and that without the facts and names, little meaningful learning could take place. I felt that I had to begin with that. If I had time, I assumed, I could get around to larger concepts -- to language, to colonial history, to climate, economy, landforms, etc. If I didn't have time, at least my students would have the facts and names as they moved on into high school.
What has evolved is an interesting balance that seems to meet my major goals: students should be able, at the end of the year, to construct a large map of the world entirely from memory. They should be able to place on that map the names and borders of the countries they've studied during the year (approximately 185), with major cities, mountain ranges, rivers, and bodies of water also labeled. And they should be able to demonstrate some knowledge, on their final maps, or on maps constructed earlier in the year, of major thematic issues.
I don't teach seventh grade any more; I have a full-time career consulting with schools on implementing and improving geography and global education programs; I've been lucky enough to present for all the A/OS regions and for schools and districts in more than 40 states.
My personal notes: Well, just to show you all how important geography is I will share with you my experience 2 weeks ago in finding a globe. I called several brand name dept. stores, you know the ones with a 'K' and 'arget' in the name? Well, both stores could not understand what I was asking for. I thought I had explained it perfectly…a globe of the world, the world we live on! It's round and usually on a spinning pedestal of some sorts. After 4 different employees, no one could still understand what I was looking for. One lady sharply told me she was not dumb and that of course they sold USA maps!
My observations, so far with my children, are that they are enjoying this tremendously! We do two lessons a week so that we can cover as much as possible. I have flexibility so that I can switch say learning about Africa around until when we are studying those area and time periods in history. The most famous lesson David must have is the grapefruit lesson. This is where you demonstrate on a grapefruit how difficult it is to draw a flat map of the world without distortion….haven't found a kid or adult yet who doesn't just love this lesson!