Geography Study Skills

Knowledge of the World: Geography study skills for 10th grade history students

Tommy Bader

Manhattan College
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Abstract

Two tenth grade history classes in the Bronx were observed on several occasions.

Through the observations and conversing with the supervising teacher it became clear that

geography instruction was lacking. Students had had little prior education in geography and the

class itself did not have a strong focus on geography either. I proposed a plan to help improve

students' geography skills. Geography is a skill that is utilized in all levels of History instruction.

To fully understand history proper geographical knowledge is needed. The plan was devised to

introduce students to two study skills to help with their learning. The skills were a mnemonic

device and organizing information. After learning the skills and giving quizzes the results

became clear. It showed that the mnemonic device did not greatly improve students' geography

skills. The results for organizing information were not able to be collected.

What is the Problem?

Students are often not givin the necessary schooling in geography. Early history classes do not

have a strong focus on geography and their terms. High School classes assume students know

these terms and also often do not take the time to teach students proper geography. Geographical

knowledge is a key component to understanding history. Without this skill students will not have

a full understanding of history. Geography dictates who you trade with, who you go to war with,

and the customs and culture of your society. Students were not getting enough geography

instruction to be able to make these conclusions.

What the teacher knew

I observed the students at cardinal hayes for a week before coming up with a plan. Cardinal

Hayes is an all boys Catholic highschool located in the Bronx. The majority of the students in the

scholl are Hispanic with a substantial minority of students being African American. There were
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no Asian or white students in the classes I observed. After my first week observing I asked my

observing teacher Mr. Liberto what he felt his students needed help with. He explained to me

that as a department the history teachers at Cardinal Hayes wanted to improve their students'

geography skills. After talking to some of the students in the class we realized that most of them

had had very little previous instruction with geography. Geography instruction was not a focus of

the every day history classroom and no unit was specifically dedicated to improving geography.

What Others Knew

Geography skills are key to having a full understanding of history. After conducting research a

prevalence study tactic is to incorporate technology. In a study conducted by Ali Demirici she

found that geographical scores were increased by 38 percent and 51 percent through the use of

GIS. (Demirici 2008) GIS stands for Geographical Information systems. GIS as an information

system had been used regularly at the university level but this study wanted to see how it would

work in the high school level. The problems this study ran into however was the lack of

experience with the technology. Demirici states “the problems with using GIS in the classroom is

quite apparent in that only two teachers out of 14 implemented the GIS-based application at their

schools'' (Demirici 2008) The teachers were not given adequate time before or during the

experiment to fully understand the processing system. This study does show though that if

teachers had the needed time to fully grasp the information system, then it would be very

successful in helping students.

Another study found that technology could be effectively implemented in the classroom

was conducted by Steven V Horton, Thomas C. Lovitt, and Tim Slocum. Their study focused on

weather computers could help students with learning disabilities learn geography. Two classes
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for students with learning disabilities taught by the same teacher were given a map of East Asia

and asked to complete it, using a map and a computer program. The study found that the

computer program was a resounding success. It states “When scores were pooled for the two

classes, the students with learning disabilities averaged 85% correct using the computer program,

19% correct in the atlas condition.” (Horton, Lovitt, Slocum 1988) This study showed that the

use of technology in the classroom can be greatly beneficial to students studying geography.

The last study I found used a geography worksheet to improve the students' knowledge of

geography. The study was conducted by Wiwik Sri Utami, Sumarmi, I. Nyoman Ruja & Sugeng

Utaya. It found that using worksheets is an effective way to raise students' skills in geography.

Students were given pre tests before the worksheet was implemented to see where their prior

knowledge level was at. Then they were introduced to a worksheet and tested again to see if the

worksheet had any benefit to their studies. The study found that the worksheet did improve

students' knowledge of geography. According to the study students had an average pretest score

of 45.81 and an average post test score of 81.95. ( Utami, Sumarmi, Ruja, Utaya 2016) This is an

increase in test score of about 36 points. This study illustrates that the simple action of utilizing

worksheets in the classroom can increase students' test grades and knowledge substantially.

The Plan

After talking with my observing teacher Mr. Liberto I began to come up with a plan. We

decided that for the next 6 to eight weeks every monday would be dedicated to geography. We

called it Map monday. This would guarantee geography instruction every week. Day one the

students were given a map of Europe and would be asked to label all the countries in the

continent. I walked around the room helping students fill out their first map. At the same time I
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began researching some geography study skills to see which one would translate best to the class.

The students in the classes I was observing did not all have access to technology so any skill I

tried implementing could not rely on computers. I decided instead to focus on common study

skills that could be utilized in other classes to see if they would have similar success in a

geography classroom. I decided the first study skill that would be implemented would be a

mnemonic device. The second week students would be given the same map of Europe and asked

to label several of the major geographical features of the continent. During this week the students

would be informed that they would have a quiz the next monday on both political and

geographical features. I would also share with the students a mnemonic device to see if it would

help them. After day three I would collect the quizzes and grade them and record the data. This

would be used to see how well the students did in general with geography but also if the

mnemonic device worked or not.

The next week the students would be given a map of asia and again asked to complete

the political and geographical features. This would occur over the next two weeks. If after

grading the first quiz the mnemonic device appeared to work, I would give the students another

mnemonic device to remember features in Asia. If the device did not work I would introduce the

next study skill organizing information. For this study skill I would break down different aspects

of geography into regions to hope the students would better remember the feature. During the

sixth week the students would have another quiz based on Asian geography. Then would grade

these quizzes to see if the study skill continued to work, or if the new study skill worked.

How the Plan Would Have worked.

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The first day began with the introductions of Map Mondays to the class. The students were given

blank maps of Europe and their textbooks and were instructed to label every country on the

contenetient. The following Monday students were again given a blank map of Europe but this

time they were to label a list of the prominent geographical features of Europe. Students were

also given a mnemonic device to remember the Mountains of Europe in Particular. The

mnemonic device was an acronym BAD CAMP (Standing for Balkan, Alps, Dolomites,

Carpathians, Apennine, Massif, and Pyrenees) Mr. Liberto announced to the class that next week

on Map Monday there would be a quiz on both the physical and geographic features of Europe.

Day three the students were given a quiz on European geography. Mr Liberto allowed me to take

home the first two periods quizzes to grade. After reviewing their quizzes I realized the

mnemonic device did not work to the degree I would have liked. For the quiz the students had to

identify 20 terms on a map of Europe. They were five mountains, countries, cities, and mountain

ranges. In general the students struggled with the quiz overal. The average score for the first

period was a 60 and the average score of the second period was a 40 percent. They also did not

do markedly better on the mountain ranges than other parts of the quiz. On average in class 1 the

students chose two of the five mountain ranges correctly while in class two they selected 1 of the

mountain ranges correctly. The feature they labeled correctly most often were the bodies of

water where the averages came to 4 and 3 correctly labeled respectively. The slight differences in

test scores can be seen in figure 1 that details the overall quiz scores of the two classes. Besides

the seas the term that was most commonly labeled correctly was Russia. In class period 1 Russia

was correctly labeled all but one time, while in the second class period it was labeled correctly

on every quiz. This showed that the mnemonic device that I presented to the students was not
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beneficial. In the end my beginning of action research was a failure as the study skill I presented

did not positively affect students' grades.

At this point I would realize mnemonics are not the right study skill for this class and

would move onto the next study strategy organizing information. The next map monday would

be a map of Asia. I would ask students why they thought that they thought the mnemonic device

didn't work, and what could be done to help. For organizing information I would group nations'

rivers and mountains into small groups, for example China, rivers yello, yangtze, desert gobi, sea

south china sea. This would hopefully work by allowing students to remember the term but also

where it is on the map. After grading and reviewing the first quizz I realized many of the

students wrote down the term but were not able to reliably place the term in its correct area. This

second study skill should hopefully answer this problem by grouping terms by smaller

geographic areas.

If the organizing information worked as planned then the next step would be to continue

this study skill for the next unit. The process would be repeated to the next quiz hopefully

showing students improvement. A limit of this study was the time. I only observed 7 weeks of

students and was only able to implement two study skills during that time. Another limit of the

study was the scale. I only observed two classes at one school. To see If the skills truly work the

study would need to be expanded.

References

Demirci, Ali. (2008). Evaluating the Implementation and Effectiveness of GIS-Based

Application in Secondary School Geography Lesson. American Journal of Applied

Sciences, 169-
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178.http://www.academia.edu/download/42867648/8_Evaluating_the_implementation.pd

Horton, Steven , Lovitt, Thomas and Slocum, Tim. (1988) TEACHING GEOGRAPHY TO

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WITH ACADEMIC DEFICIT. Learning Disability

Quarterly. 371-379 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?

doi=10.1.1.831.9797&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Sri Utami, Wiwik, Sumarmi, Ruja, Nyoman & Utaya, Sugeng. (2016) The Effectiveness of

Geography Student Worksheet to Develop Learning Experiences for High School

Students. Journal of Education and Learning. 315-321

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1111407.pdf

Data

Figure 1 quiz results from the first geography quiz.

Class One 17 students

Range 1-18

Average grade 12/20 60%

Class two 15 students

Range 3-14

Average grade 8/20 40%

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Figure 2 Map given to students for Quiz