find me a geography text. . .

[Guest Barb B]

that isn't over 600 pages please! I need one for ds rising senior. Needless to say, we have had US history, world history and this year US government ( fall semester) and economics (spring semester). I thought that was good - but 2 Texas colleges say we also have to have one credit in geography. Well, I am tempted to place it on the transcript - because we cover geography in the other history classes. Don't know.

How have you covered Geography? Has anyone covered it within the other history classes and given 1 credit on the transcript for it?

 

The geography books I have looked at seem to be lots of pages of stuff we know.

 

Barb

[elizabeth]

 

http://wps.prenhall.com/esm_rubenstein_humangeo_8/ We are using this but an earlier edition that we purchased from Ebay.

[OLG]

We did not cover it as a course for high school. It was covered in the elementary grades though.

 

Mary

[Guest Barb B]

Thanks. But I hate to say I am looking for something not so long. I hate to say this but I just want to have an easy, quick way to get this done. I am a bit miffed that this requirement has popped up in the colleges in texas since recently. I am still wondering if anyone included geography in the other histoy classes and gave a credit for geog. because of it? I just may do that. DS senior doesn't need another class.

 

Barb

[OLG]

I remember that MODG (Mother of Divine Grace school) had the words 'geography" in all of their high school history syllabi..... Couild you handle it that way...include it in the course description and title?

[Guest Barb B]

OLG - yeh, could be. I still may just make it less confussion for admissions and list it as a separate class on the transcript and course descriptions. When I look at the texts out there I know we covered this stuff. I feel that colleges change yearly around here what they want and it ticks me off!

 

Barb

[May]

Have you looked at BJU? My dd did it in 9th as a year long course but it could be done in a semester. Good luck.

[Nicole M]

http://wps.prenhall.com/esm_rubenstein_humangeo_8/ We are using this but an earlier edition that we purchased from Ebay.

 

Which year did you do this, and which era of history were you studying at the time? (Are you doing a four-year cycle?) I'm confused about how to integrate geography in with all the literature and history we're studying, since that takes up so much time.

[Nicole M]

Thanks. But I hate to say I am looking for something not so long. I hate to say this but I just want to have an easy, quick way to get this done. I am a bit miffed that this requirement has popped up in the colleges in texas since recently. I am still wondering if anyone included geography in the other histoy classes and gave a credit for geog. because of it? I just may do that. DS senior doesn't need another class.

 

Barb

 

What about Trail Guides? They have a high school level; my oldest son did this, and like another poster mentioned, I put "geography" on his transcript with the history. Another option would be to integrate geography in with Geology or Earth Science. I think I read that others have done that, as well.

 

http://www.geomatters.com/products/details.asp?ID=6

 

Here are the HS level notebook pages:

 

http://www.geomatters.com/products/details.asp?ID=305

[Guest Barb B]

Well, in ninth grade I had a geog. text - and returned it. Then I used the trail guide book and once in a while gave him a list of places. . . from that to make sure he knew. That way I felt the idea of knowing where places are is covered. As far as the geology/earth science part of that text - I flet that ds had in his 8th grade earth science text and couldn't figure out why on earth he should repeat it! Then the text (that I returned) had a cultural geog. component to it - you know "how human civilizations interact with the geog." sort of thing. I felt this was covered in history.

 

Thanks for the links. I am going to go read them. The more I think about it - the more I think I have covered geography.

Barb

Edited July 26, 2010 by Barb B

[Guest Barb B]

OK - the tail guide book is the book I used to figure out what ds should know. So, should I put that as the text in my course description? I am wondering if I should use a traditional sounding geography description or have one that says that we encorporated geog. into earth science, and history?

 

Barb

[gullicat]

i do a mixed-age geography drill 15m every day, and a 30-45 min 1x wk discussion period (the youngers do geog notebooks with state pages, etc and I pull up wiki or some other resource and discuss the politics, history, etc of a country, zone or geographical issue with the highschoolers)

 

I count the cumulative effect as a geography credit in highschool and find the retention is much improved with discussion/application and daily brief review.

 

FWIW

-sarah

[Nicole M]

i do a mixed-age geography drill 15m every day, and a 30-45 min 1x wk discussion period (the youngers do geog notebooks with state pages, etc and I pull up wiki or some other resource and discuss the politics, history, etc of a country, zone or geographical issue with the highschoolers)

 

I count the cumulative effect as a geography credit in highschool and find the retention is much improved with discussion/application and daily brief review.

 

FWIW

-sarah

 

Oh! <V-8 forehead smacking moment> We also listen to the GeoQuiz on PRI's The World. You can find those here:

 

feed://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510009

 

and here:

 

http://www.theworld.org/geo-quiz/

 

I think regular small doses are useful, and agree with the cumulative effect.

[J-rap]

I felt the same way. We covered a lot of geography in history, travel, discussing world events, etc. I felt my children knew more about geography than the ps kids their age who took a class in it. So, I did check out a couple of easy read geography books from the library - one was something like The NYC Public Library's Best Geography Book, or something like that. No questions or essays, just light bedtime reading or stuff for reading in the car. I also got one of those Walch's quick books - I forget what they're called. It asks one geography question each day. Warm-ups or something like that. Anyway, I listed geography separately, and listed those two books first and then several other history books that we used, with a quick note that this course was a study of world geography that involved map work, earth science, world cultures, and anything you feel you have studied in other courses that relates to geography.

[Tiramisu]

ABeka has a relative thin one-semester geography book. You could beef it up by keeping a current events notebook and make it one credit. I took a class in college, though I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, and we had to choose three current events topics and cover them for the semester with summaries of daily (?) newpaper articles (in the days before the net).

[Pam L in Mid Tenn]

Since you have already covered geography in all the other courses, why not find a geography text book and ONLY read it? You could probably check out a book from the library. If you need a written grade, have her to a few 2 page reports on some countries she finds interesting. Or you could grade her on the % of completed reading? Or check out back copies of National Geographic magazine to read and give oral reports?

 

It seems that you HAVE covered geography just not as a separate course and the college admissions people want to see a separate credit. If that is truly the case I'd prob get a text book and have her read it, assign 2 short papers per semester.

[TravelingChris]

My two oldest got geography on their transcripts but it wasn't one textbook I used. In fact, I didn't use textbooks. Both got videos, played games, did map work, and traveled a lot. They also did geography as part of any history they were studying. The videos they used were things like Michael Palin;s Pole to Pole, and a few other series, BBC Wild Africa and other similar series, a series on Deserts around the world by a German couple, and some other ones.

[Corraleno]

I would just add a 1/2 credit in US Geography to your DS's transcript for the year he did US History, and add a 1/2 credit in World Geography to the year he did World History. That way you have 1 Geography credit that looks "separate" enough for the colleges, while implying that it was done in conjunction with the history (which it was) rather than as a separate subject.

 

Jackie