Geography is a new elective being offered to 6th and 8th graders at Wells Middle School. Why do students need to know geography when Google Maps and Google Earth are just a click away? The idea is that if students can understand the shape of the world–identify the continents, countries, oceans, capital cities and languages–they will be able to better navigate it.
“The purpose of the course is to help students understand the concepts of geography and how they apply to their own lives. My goal was not to help them memorize where places around the world are located, but rather to see how the themes of geography can connect to their own experience,” said teacher Ydalia Pena, herself a new Wells teacher.
Students are currently applying their understanding of the three themes they have learned in class: location, place and region, and are working on creating postcards focused on their ancestors’ place of origin.
“Does everyone have their passports?” asked Pena, “because we are traveling to Greece.”
Dylan Ross stood in front of the class before a projected image of her postcard. The postcard featured the Greek flag, an outline of the country and a picture of the Colossus of Rhodes.
“My dad’s grandmother is from Greece. Before this project I didn’t know I had family that came from Rhodes. The statue was created after winning a big battle and was said to have been 108 feet tall–the size of the statue of liberty! The statue, which was around for about 50 years, fell during an earthquake.”
“Ok class, get ready to travel north to Sweden,” said Pena.
“Did you know Sweden has 139,000 lakes? I didn’t,” said Silas DiCavlo.
The class traveled all over the world, to India, Italy, Dominican Republic, and El Salvador.
On the back of the postcards, students wrote a message to a relative, including specifics about the place, physical features, landmarks, history, a reason for visiting, and an opinion or emotion about the visit. A stamp or an image of a stamp was also required.
“I wrote to my parents from India,” said Jazlyn Thomas.
Dear mom and dad, India was amazing. It was especially great to visit the Murud Janjira, a fort in the south east near the Arabian Sea, with water views from all four sides. It was so beautiful to watch the sunset. While I was there, on August 15th, I celebrated Independence Day. I used the Gandhi stamp to send this postcard, which commemorates the first anniversary of Independence. Did you know that Gandhi was honored as the first Indian to be depicted on stamps of India? Love Jazlyn
“This class is so interesting because I get to research my ancestry,” said Jazlyn.