5 Themes of Geography Reflection and Project

Analyzing the world with the five themes of geography help people better understand connections between people and the earth because you can tell how people interact with the earth and related patterns, you are able to tell where things are, locate places on the map, describe the movement of people, goods, and ideas, and describe the human and physical features of an area. For example, you can tell the absolute location of an area with the exact coordinates of that place and you can also tell the relative location of an area, meaning you can tell where a place is in relation to somewhere else. Place describes what an area is like. You can use physical and human characteristics to describe what an area is like. For example, physical characteristics of a place could be specific mountains like Mount Everest, deserts like the Sahara desert, oceans including the Pacific Ocean, or climate types. Movement describes how people, goods, and ideas get from place to place. Movement of goods is how people trade goods, and commuter patterns. For example, one country could trade something for a good with another country, which is an example of the movement of goods. Lastly, region can help analyze the world because it describes the common characteristics of an area. For example, a region in Africa is the oil region because there is a lot of oil in that area, the oil is the common characteristic in that part of Africa. The most difficult theme to understand was region because I found it confusing to find the common characteristics of a certain area. I was also confused with the human and physical characteristics and how to find those in an area. I couldn’t really figure out which area had which characteristic and the resources in each area to classify a region. For example, in Africa, there is a region of physical features including deserts, mountains, and coastal plains. This was confusing for me because I couldn’t figure out where each of the regions were, and the common characteristics of the specific region.