Geographic Alliance of Iowa

Putting Iowa in its place

Fiction, Geography, and Migration

This lesson was created by Dr. Kay Weller (University of Northern Iowa) for students from ninth grade and up. This lesson plan will allow students to learn how to read fiction while searching for geography content within a work.

Discipline/Subject

Human Geography

American History

English

Reading

Theme

Environmental

Climate

Population

Cultural/Social

Region

United States

North America

Five Themes of Geography

Place

Human-Environment Interaction

Movement

Region

Common Core Standards

Speaking and Listening Standards (SL)

Readings Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies (RH)

National Geographic Standards

1. How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective

9. The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on Earth's surface

14. How human actions modify the physical environment

15. How physical systems affect human systems

17. How to apply geography to interpret the past

18. How to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future

Iowa Core Social Studies Standards

GE 1. Understand the use of geographic tools to locate and analyze information about people, places, and environments

GE 3. Understand how human factors and the distribution of resources affect the development of society and the movement of populations

GE 5. Understand how human actions modify the environment and how the environment affects humans

GE 6. Understand how culture affects the interaction of human populations through time and space