1. Geography of United States
What is Geography?
How does Geography affect our lives?

2. Factors to Geography Location: Where is it? Place: What is it like?
Movement: Why do people, things, and ideas move from place to place?
Region: What common characteristics does an area share?
Human-Environment Interaction: What is the relationship between people and their surroundings?

3. Resources
America the Beautiful
50 STATES TOUR

4. Test your Knowledge!
You have 5 minutes to identify as many states as you can on the U.S. map provided and the Mississippi River, Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and Gulf of Mexico, as well as Washington DC. Make sure to only use pencil to do this in case you need to erase some of your responses.

5. U.S. Geography Amazing Race
Objective: I will be able to locate places and regions of importance in the United States and analyze how physical characteristics of the environment influenced population settlement
Blank map is for Pre-Ap, labeled for On-Level
Group students into groups of at least three, can be more depending on class size
Each group needs a runner, an atlas person, and a recorder-if you have more than three people we usually have 2 runners, but this is flexible where you put the extra person/people
The runner has to go to the atlas person and ask where certain geographic features are, but are not allowed to look at the atlas
The runner then goes back and describes the location to the recorder, who has to draw it on their map
Students need to really use directional descriptions
Items to label:
Applachian Mountains
Rocky Mountains
Ohio River
Gulf of Mexico
Mississippi River
Missouri River
Rio Grande River
Washington DC
Atlantic Ocean
Pacific Ocean
Group that gets the closest on their drawn map wins!!!
Closing questions for journal:
How does geography affect where and how you live?
How does geography lead to colonization?

6. Map for Amazing Race

7. Geography of U.S. Map Activity
Geography of the United States
Label and color the following geographical features on the map.
Shade in mountains Brown
Appalachian Mountains
Rocky Mountains
Shade in bodies of water Blue and label them in black
Atlantic Ocean
Pacific Ocean
Gulf of Mexico
Great Lakes (Label all 5)
Mississippi River
Ohio River
Missouri River
Erie Canal
Label Red Dot for Capital
Washington D.C.
States: Label them in black and trace the outline of the states Red
New York, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri
Regions/Territories: shade the region in yellow and label in black
Ohio River Valley
Northwest Territory

9. Appalachian Mountains
Rocky Mountains
Ohio River
Gulf of Mexico
Mississippi River
Missouri River
Rio Grande River
Washington DC
Atlantic Ocean
Pacific Ocean