Teacher Notes South Asia
Big Idea – Combinations and Hazards
Spatial Thinking Skill – Direction
Scaffold Outline:
3-5: The sample lessons in these grades focus on two different kinds of directions:
1. the set of cardinal directions of the global latitude-longitude grid.
2. the relative directions within particular earth systems. These directions are often named by words
like uphill, downstream, uptown, or toward or away from a named feature.
In South Asia, directions are especially important in describing wind, which is a cause of the seasonal
monsoons, and rivers, which are consequences of the monsoons. Direction is also a key to
understanding the movements of crustal plates that cause the uplift of the high Himalaya mountain
range. In other words, students are likely to have trouble understanding these ideas about South Asia if
they do not have a solid grasp of the basic concepts of direction.
Resources: This folder has some activities about river patterns in South Asia. Future versions of
this unit will probably have activities about wind direction and plate tectonics, as well as the
trading routes that became important as early as Roman times.
In the meantime, students can also use atlases, wall maps, or the internet to look for places that
they can describe with particular direction words – like “Name three large rivers that flow north”
or “name two peninsulas that point south.” Writing these words in complete sentences can meet
Common Core language arts standards while building geographic place vocabulary.
As with spatial patterns and analogies, one key is to find directional relationships that are
meaningful in your home community or connected with other parts of the curriculum. For
example, you might ask students in a history class to give directions to someone on a particular
part of the Oregon Trail or the Underground Railroad.
Activity
Where are Things Made
Rivers of Southeast Asia
Michigan Content Expectations
4-P4.2.2: Participate in projects to help or inform others.
4-G1.0.2: Use cardinal and intermediate directions to describe
the relative location of significant places (in the United States).
6-12: In this grade range, we can extend the idea of direction to include the movements of peoples,
armies, and navies in the past. This is a good topic to introduce in South Asia, because the arrangement
of mountains, canyons, and deserts helped to make travel to and from this world region difficult. As a
result, the contacts are fewer in number and therefore more manageable in a lesson about connections
between places. The Big Idea Presentation and clickable Atlas have sections that deal with these barriers
to travel in particular directions. Students could use atlases, wall maps, or the internet to look for similar
barriers (or avenues) for travel in other regions of the world.
*Other Resources: The Multimedia Presentation folder has activities about predicting floods in South
Asia. Bangladesh is like a poster-child for many adverse effects of global climate change, from floods to
intensified hurricanes in the Bay of Bengal. The Model Curriculum scaffold emphasizes the interaction
of these physical conditions with the human-caused issue of political borders that do not fit
environmental conditions. As a result, every major river in South Asia starts in one country and flows
through at one least different country on its way to the ocean. This makes water management very
difficult, even without the complications added by the fact that the political borders were drawn to
reflect religious differences, which in turn tend to reinforce tensions across the borders.
The folder of *Multimedia Presentations has units about Urban Gardens and Making bricks which tell
different stories about human ingenuity in finding ways to grow food and construct buildings in a
crowded place, one that has little room for forests or space-intensive forms of agriculture.
Activity
Rivers and
Population
Rivers of
Southeast Asia
Partition of
British India
Two Kinds of
Regions
Flood Causes
Michigan Content Expectations
7-G1.2.4: Draw the general population distribution of the Eastern Hemisphere on a
map, analyze the patterns, and propose two generalizations about the location and
density of the population.
7-G1.2.6: Apply the skills of geographic inquiry to analyze a problem or issue of
importance to a region of the Eastern Hemisphere
7-G1.2.1: Locate the major landforms, rivers and climate regions of the Eastern
Hemisphere
7-G1.2.6: Apply the skills of geographic inquiry to analyze a problem or issue of
importance to a region of the Eastern Hemisphere
7-G2.1.2: Use information from GIS, remote sensing and the World Wide Web to
compare and contrast the surface features and vegetation of the continents of the
Eastern Hemisphere.
7-G2.2.1: Describe the human characteristics of the region under study.
High School World History and Geography
6.2.4: Imperialism – Use historical and modern maps and other evidence to
analyze and explain the causes and global consequences of nineteenth-century
imperialism, including encounters between imperial powers and local peoples in
India, Africa, Central Asia and East Asia.
7-G1.3.1: Use the fundamental themes of geography to describe regions or places
on earth
7-G1.2.6: Apply the skills of geographic inquiry to analyze a problem or issue of
importance to a region of the Eastern Hemisphere
HS World History and Geography: Contemporary Global Issues
CG2: Resources: Explain the changes over the past 50 years in the use,
distribution, and importance of natural resources on human life, settlement, and
interactions by describing and evaluating the impact of humans on the global
environment.
Capstone: Large capstone projects based in South Asia could take a variety of forms, depending on
which aspects of this region you wish to emphasize. The Big Idea Fireworks diagram has a discussion
question about water management and political borders, but there are other issues that divide the
countries of this ancient and still somewhat separate region.
Resources: The Big Idea presentation and clickable Atlas can provide maps and background for
investigations of some of the consequences of the colonial era and post-colonial partition.
Readings about Ashoka, the Taj Mahal, Gandhi, modern electronic call centers, and Bollywood
can all be situated in this complex region.
* Teaching Geography, 3rd edition, New York: Guilford Press, 2014, Phil Gersmehl
Curriculum Connections:
Approx
Grade
Related
Class
Common
Core
Spatial
Reasoning
Where are our clothes and
toys made?
Rivers of Southeast Asia
E/M
Econ
Reading
Connections
E/M
Earth Sci
Reading
Pattern
Rivers and population
Mid
Earth Sci
Math
Comparison
The sun never sets on the
British Empire
Partition: Formal,
functional, fiat Regions
Floods in a monsoon
region: hierarchy of causes
Mid
History
Math
Pattern
M/U
History
Reading
Region
M/U
Earth Sci
Math
Comparison
Activities
Keywords
source, factory, import,
purchase
river, source, mouth, direction,
tributary, parallel, border
river, volume, flow,
watershed, Colorado’s,
population
empire, colony, longitude,
time zone
colony, partition, language,
religion, watershed, border
monsoon, flood, upstream,
downstream, diversion