National Geographic Xpeditions Lesson Plans

Xpeditions, National Geographic's geography education page, has created lesson plans for grades K-12 on city design, sprawl, and planning. They are part of National Geographic's Geography Action!, an annual conservation and awareness program designed to educate and excite people about our natural, cultural, and historic treasures. The topic for 2003 was Habitats: Home Sweet Home, which focuses on cities and suburbs.

The lesson plans summarized below are only some of the city-related lesson plans in National Geographic's extensive database. The link at the top takes you to a full list with a wide range of topics such as environmental protection, cultural awareness, and others.

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* Traditional Towns and Modern Suburbs (Grades K-2) helps students learn the differences between sprawl and traditional town planning, using aerial maps, class discussion, and National Geographic's virtual tour of a New Urbanist neighborhood. Students draw their own cities, towns, or suburbs at the beginning of the lesson, and at the end draw and describe their own maps based on what they have learned.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/12/gk2/sprawltrad.html

* Design Your Own Suburb (Grades 3-5), asks students to think about their own perceptions of cities and suburbs and to consider the features that exist in typical urban and suburban areas. They also learn about sprawl and consider transportation, housing, businesses, and mixed-use neighborhoods when they design a new suburb.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/12/g35/sprawldesign.html

* In Your Town in the Past, Present, and Future (Grades 3-5), students identify an environmental issue in their community or region. They draw two pictures -- one positive and one negative -- of what might happen with the problem in fifty years. To stimulate discussion, students view pictures of Bodie, California, which became a ghost town over 100 years ago when the gold mining industry went downhill. This discussion is a basis for students to form a plan to educate their community about the problem they chose.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/18/g35/yourtown.html

* Your Special Town (Grades 3-5) asks students to reflect on the special features of their hometown that makes it unique. After drawing and comparing pictures of their hometown, students create presentations that could be used to welcome tourists and visitors to their town. This lesson helps students separate desirable and undesirable aspects of their cities and towns.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/04/g35/specialtown.html

* Top Ten Cities (Grades 3-5) teaches students about population through the top 10 cities in their state, province, or country. The class divides into ten smaller groups, and each group is assigned a city on which to do a report. When the reports are ready, students create a large map of their state, province, or country with masking tape on the classroom floor. Each group conducts its report by standing on the spot that marks their city. An additional exercise is to stack books or blocks on each city's location on the map proportionate to its population, creating a three-dimensional bar graph.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/09/g35/topcities.html

* In What To Do About Sprawl (Grades 6-8), students visit a virtual suburb to compare and contrast sprawl with New Urbanism. They analyze a map and text about a suburb that has experienced sprawl and write reports to this suburb's City Council on how it can reduce the effects of sprawl and plan for the future to prevent further sprawl.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/12/g68/sprawlwhat.html

* Planning a New Town (Grades 6-8) asks students to help plan a new town by deciding what buildings, services, housing, and infrastructure should be included in it. Guided by a class discussion about the essentials of a self-sustaining community, students create a map and give oral presentations on various elements of the new town they have created.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/12/g68/newtown.html

* Spatial Organization: Identification of Functional Regions is a three- to five-hour activity that conveys the importance of regions and regional interconnectedness. Students draw maps depicting regional linkages and the flow of goods, services, and information. Their maps are informed by data they collect from surveys of businesses and residents in their area. Examples of topics include: how often, how far, and for what reasons families commute to other areas; how many customers the local Internet service provider serves; where students of various schools come from; etc.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/05/g68/regions.html

* With Life on the Edge: Cities on the Fringe (Grades 9-12), high school students become familiar with the concept of the "edge city," a suburb that has become more independent of the downtown area. Through class discussion, students answer questions such as how edge cities came to be, what industries and services are there, what makes them independent from the city centers, and many others.
href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/12/g912/fringe.html

* Sprawl: The National and Local Situation (Grades 9-12) has students investigate the effects of sprawl on the environment, people's daily lives, and the local and regional economy. They draw mental maps illustrating their perceptions of modern suburbs and use maps and aerial photos to determine how traditional towns eventually became sprawling suburbs. The lesson includes drawing, researching, writing, visual analysis, and class discussion.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/12/g912/sprawlnational.html

* Students investigate the effect of physical forces and climate on cities in Places and Processes: Physical Processes in Shaping Places. This lesson includes both analysis of existing maps (e.g. tectonic, climatic, etc.) and creation of new ones. Each student focuses on one or two states and the unique physical forces, physical processes, or climate that influence the city's shape. These elements could include earthquakes and fault lines, glaciers, desert, erosion from rivers, and many others. "Places and Processes" is an especially relevant resource for examining the effect of climate change on cities.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/04/g912/processes.html

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The lesson plans described above are not the only planning-related resources available from National Geographic. For more information, go directly to National Geographic's Cities and Suburbs page. (APA's Kids and Community website is listed as one of the links on this page.)