Grade Level 3
Lesson Title: The Local Region
Suggested Time Period: 1 week
Framework/Standards Connection and Geography Theme/Standards:
Standard 3.1.1: Students describe the physical and human geography and use maps,
tables, graphs, photographs, and charts to organize information about people, places and
environments in a spatial context by:
1. identifying geographical features found in their local region
Standard 3.2.1: Students draw from historical and community resources to organize the
sequence of events in local history and describe how each period of settlement left its
mark on the land, in terms of:
1. the explorers who visited here, the newcomers who settled here, and the
people who continue to come to the region, including their cultural and
religious traditions and contributions
2. the economies established by settlers and their influence on the present-day
economy, with emphasis on the importance of private property and
entrepreneurship
Geography Theme:
Region
Focus Question(s):
1. What is a region?
2. What are the geographic regions of the Los Angeles area?
Outcomes:
Students will create a map showing the geographic regions of the Los Angeles area.
Using a community map, students will identify different regions within their community.
Primary Sources/Literature:
community map
Activities:
1. Looking at a landform map of the United States, have students with a partner list states
located near each other that have some kind of similarity. Have partners determine the
criteria by which they have grouped the states. e.g. The Great Plains, The Rocky Mountains, Pacific
Coast States. States and criteria are recorded on a student made T-chart and are shared with
the whole class. From the charts it is determined that areas that have common landforms
can form regions.
States
Similarity
2. Ask students what physical feature regions they can name in the area in which they
live. The Los Angeles area has six geographic regions: mountains, valleys, rivers,
bays, basin . Have students construct a physical geography map of the Los Angeles area
by gluing the natural landform regions (Appendix 1) in the appropriate locations on the
blank outline map (Appendix 2). Ask students which region their community is located
in.
3.Looking at a community map, have students identify regions within the
community: commercial region, residential region, recreational region, etc. Shade each
region in a different color. Have students predict why these regions are located where
they are. This activity can be extended to school and classroom regions. Have students
identify different regions of the classroom and the activities that take place in them.
4. Using the United States and Mexico as examples, have students determine what other
attributes make each of these countries a region separate from the other. e.g. language,
government, economics, culture, customs etc. Looking at a map of the Los Angeles area, have
students determine if they can identify other regions besides the already identified
physical feature regions.
Assessment:
Give students an outline map of the area and have them locate and label the six
geographic regions from memory.
Bibliography:
Delameter, Cynthia, and Dr. Melanie Renfrew, and Kimberly Reems , and Dr.
Priscilla Porter. Unit 1: Exploring Our Regional Landscape. Carson, Calif. 1998