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The five themes of geography is an American educational framework for teaching geography, adopted in 1984 by the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) and the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in their Joint Committee on Geographic Education. The five themes were published in the NCGE/AAG publication Guidelines for Geographic Education, Elementary, and Secondary Schools. Following this, most modern American geography and social studies K-12 classrooms have adopted the five unifying themes of geography in their discussion of the subject. These five themes are location (which can be absolute or relative), place, human-environment interaction, movement, and regions.

The five themes organizational approach was superseded by the National Geography Standards, a set of eighteen standards promulgated in 1994; however, the five themes continue to be used as an educational approach.^[1] A helpful way to memorize all of the five themes is MR.HELP (movement, region, human/environment interaction, location, and place).

[edit] Location

A location is placed or situated, and can be specified either as unchanging or comparative. An absolute location is one that is fixed, such as being described by latitude and longitude. Alternatively, the relative location is shown with respect to its surroundings.

[edit] Human Environment Interaction (H.E.I.)

The people in this house interact with the environment through the water, the air, and their daily energy needs.

Human-environment interaction (H.E.I.) is the complex, interwoven bond between humans and nature. H.E.I. is split up into three major subcategories: adapt to, depend on, and modify. It explores humanity's use and modifications to the environment. Examples of human-environment interaction include bridges, dams, the mining industry, and any structures built by or destroyed by humans. HEI can be have positive and negative changes. A positive change may be recycling while a negative change may be pollution.

[edit] Place

A certain way of placing things;

For example, the Great Pyramid of Giza has characteristics such as sand, heat, and

Place can include absolute location and relative location. An absolute location would be a global position using lines of latitude and longitude. It can also be an address. Relative locations can only be used in a local area. If someone said that the gym was 3 blocks down, he would be giving you a relative location. Place also includes Maps and Mapping. Maps are usually relative to finding absolute locations.

[edit] Movement

Movement is the travel of people, goods and ideas from one location to another or political events. Examples of movement include America's westward expansion, the Information Revolution, and immigration. New devices such as the airplane and the Internet allow physical and ideological goods to be transferred long distances in short time intervals. The movement of technology, ideas, government, etc.

An example of movement is the railroad. Before its founding in the mid-1800s, a journey across long distances was tiring and difficult. Westward expansion in the United States was an example of these long, arduous journeys that often required several months to complete and were fraught with danger. However, upon the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, transportation between the East Coast and the West Coast took mere days to complete. Also things that move like a car bus bike and other things like that.

movement is the cause of continual change. geographers are constantly searching for movement patterns, so they can predict changes to the earths surface.

[edit] Notes

An area that shares one common feature.

1. ^ Matt Rosenberg, The Five Themes of Geography, at About.com

[edit] References

• Cayton, Andrew, Elisabeth I. Perry, Linda Reed, and Allan M. Winkler. America: Pathways to the Present. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2007. ISBN 0-13-133510-3

[edit] See also

• List of basic geography topics
• List of geography topics