Geography Labs
As adults, asking us to go out and explore a part of our city is simple. We can be trusted to go out and do the work and be responsible for ourselves while exploring. We do not have to be monitored. For my social studies methods course, we were instructed to participate in a geography lab. What is a geography lab? A geography lab is an inquiry activity, where students are prompted to explore their surroundings. My class, located in Milwaukee, was prompted to explore the 16th Street Bridge. The majority of the students at the university are not from Milwaukee and do not know much about the surrounding area, therefore they have not ventured outside of campus very often. Other students, like myself, who are from Milwaukee, are aware of the different aspects of the city. For example, the severe segregation that tears our city apart. As much as I hate to admit it, though, I was not very familiar with the significance of the 16th Street Bridge.
For our geography lab, we were asked to walk along the bridge and take pictures and videos of specific pieces of history that represent the famous desegregation marches that happened on that very bridge. We were prompted to go to specific parts of the bridge, and look for specific things, but other than that we were free to interpret the activity as we pleased. Afterwards, we got into groups and created a story map to showcase the story of the 16th Street Bridge. The activity was both fun and interesting, while still teaching us something very important about our city. We all took different perspectives from the acitvity. Some students had never been across the bridge, and had no idea what life outside of our campus’s “bubble” was like. For me, it pieced together some very important history of my city.
For K-8 students, though, this sort of activity may not be as simple. Sending out a class full of eight year olds to explore the outside world can be stressful and time consuming, therefore the activity would obviously have to be modified.
For younger students, a Geography lab could be set up in the same way: students are given a place to explore, students are prompted to keep an eye out for certain things, students are asked to collect evidence, students can relate the activity to what they are learning in class. In order to focus students onto the specific topic, giving students a historical location to explore, limiting their list of places, but still giving them that freedom of finding their own evidence is important. This allows students to hold ownership of the evidence and information they are collecting. A way to make this activity more K-8 friendly would be to try to set it up more as a field trip. Ask for parent volunteers, school volunteers, etc. to accompany your class on your adventure. Giving each supervisor 2–5 kids, depending on how many supervisors there are to assist the class, and having each group branch off, could give students that freedom to adventure at their own pace.
Once the adventure is done and evidence is collected, students can breakup into smaller groups (pairs), and complete a story map. This process of having different students go at different paces, will allow for different input to the story maps. Maybe mixing up the pairs, so two students of different groups could work together could allow for the maps’ information/stories to be diverse from multiple perspectives. Also, giving each group, in the adventuring process, a different prompt so they are all looking for something different could also be time efficient and allow for even more perspectives and evidence for the story maps.
I want teachers to understand the importance for freedom, exploration, and choice for students. These three components allow for students to have a sense of ownership in their work, in return, making them more engaged and interested in the content; especially when the content involves something so close to home.
More places in Milwaukee with rich history/interesting content to explore include:
Outside of Milwaukee, some suggestions for places to take your students depends on what you want your students to learn. I recommonend researching your city’s history. Why does this street have this name? Why is this statue here? Answering these questions will help to shape your geography lab.
