TEKS World Geography10 Economics. The
student understands the distribution,characteristics, and interactions of the
economic systems in the world. The student is expected to: (C) compare the ways people satisfy
their basic needs through the production of goods and services such as
subsistence agriculture versus commercial agriculture or cottage industries
versus commercial industries.
TEKS WG11 Economics. The student
understands how geography influences economic activities. The student is
expected to: (C) assess how changes in climate,
resources, and infrastructure (technology, transportation, and communication)
affect the location and patterns of economic activities.
TEKS WG8 Geography. The student
understands how people, places, and environments are connected and
interdependent. The student is expected to: (C) evaluate the economic and
political relationships between settlements and the environment, including
sustainable development and renewable/non-renewable resources.
All three standards come from our unit
on sustainable development. This is a tough subject for my students to
comprehend because they have never lacked for anything or seen much devastation
from any source. They seem to only understand the fallacy that there is always
gas at the pump and food at the grocery store, no matter what. The events that
they are aware of are so alien to them in nature that they truly believe that
it could not happen to them in their own local world.
The lesson itself would initiate with
a baseline of information from them finding local examples of that explain the
standard and provide evidence of how it satisfies the qualifications of the
standard itself. The students would then begin to follow the global competency
of “Investigating the World” by branching out and finding similar examples from
around the world to help establish a connectivity in meeting basic needs,
whether commercially or on a subsistence level.
The students would then proceed to the
second standard and analyze what role the physical geography plays in where the
location of economic activities occurs. They would be tasked with identifying
specifics from the various regions selected to try and establish a pattern in
relation to the locations of the economic activity itself. They would need to
consider various factors ranging from tectonic features (rift valleys,
mountains), natural features (deserts, rivers, forests, etc), and human
geographic features (shipping lanes, roads/highways, ports). The major piece of
this section still rests in investigating the world and connectivity of the
human race.
Finally, the students would analyze
the economic activities and try and identify the level of economic development.
The students are to investigate the relationship of the economic activities
identified and their relationship with/impact on the environment. The students
will need to consider all pieces needed for the economic activity to occur,
what resources are renewable/nonrenewable, what if anything can be
reused/processed into something else of value,
the overall sustainability of the economic activity itself and the relation it
possesses with that particular country’s economic livelihood. Once this has
been completed, students will be asked to write a journal entry from the stand
point of someone in that country that engages a particular activity that they
do not agree with. They will be justifying why they must continue in that field
of economic endeavor. This will help the students gain a new perspective on why
certain activities, like deforestation in Brazil, continue and destroy the
natural environment. They are not to be asked to agree with the activity
selected but to seek to understand why people would engage in certain economic
behaviors that are detrimental to the environment itself. The students will
then be asked to look for viable alternatives to that economic activity and to
provide evidence as to why their alternate would work better for that country.
As a summative assessment, the
students will be asked to write a speech to the United Nations as a
representative of one of the countries from their research. In their speech
they are to address the pros and cons of the economic activity in question as
well as the rational as to why it is the best option for that area
(geographically speaking) and why it must continue. Acknowledgements must be
given to the global impacts for continuing in that endeavor as part of that speech.
No comments:
Post a Comment