Tag Archive for ‘geography’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Tag Archive for 'geography'

Way Smarter Than a 5th Grader

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 23, 2008 in Core Knowledge. 0 Comments

Pop Quiz (answers below):

What is the westernmost Asian national capital?
In which country is Makossa is a popular type of music?
Where is Tillya Tepe?

If you don’t know, then you too would have lost the National Geographic Bee. The winner, 11-year-old Akshay Rajagopal from Lincoln, Nebraska won the contest by knowing that Cochabamba is the third-largest conurbation in Bolivia.

A conurbation, needless to say, is an extensive urban area resulting from the expansion of several cities or towns so that they coalesce but usually retain their separate identities. But you knew that.

There’s a terrific, if humbling, ten-question daily Geo Bee online. Start boning up for next year.

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She Had Me at Turkmenistan

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 6, 2008 in Podcast and Video. 0 Comments

This You Tube video of a toddler who can do what few high school students can do—ID nearly every country on a world map—has been viewed over two million times. Thus, I’m probably the last person to have heard about it. At an age when most kids would be happy merely to be put in front of a video of Madagascar, she can actually find it on a map.

Other than David Tyree’s catch, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve seen all week.

Where on Earth can you take a geography class?

Published by CKF on April 26, 2007 in Curriculum. 0 Comments

Students learn the subject in other countries, but most American public schools don’t teach it — except as part of history and social studies.

Shradhha Sharma | Columbia News Service

Ten years ago at a convention in Baltimore, fifth-grade history teacher Lydia Lewis met someone she described as a “bright, college-educated young woman in her 20s.” Lewis was busily reviewing her notes for a slide presentation on geography when she felt someone tapping her on the shoulder.

Turning around, she saw the young woman standing there, a quizzical expression on her face. In her hand was a slide depicting a map of the United States. She held it upside down so that Florida was in the north and asked Lewis innocently, “Ma’am, which way does this slide go in?”

“I was completely shocked,” Lewis recalls. “But being a teacher, I thought this was one of those teachable moments so I started to explain to her the right way to look at the map. But she simply wasn’t interested.”

As teachers across the country try to help their students meet test-score standards mandated by law, there is one subject that has been left behind: geography.

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