I teach 6th grade social studies and reading at Centennial Middle School in the rural community of Montrose in southwestern Colorado. Our school is 6-8, with almost 500 students. The 6th grade social studies curriculum is primarily geography-based, focusing on the five themes of geography and the Eastern Hemisphere, specifically on the ancient river civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China.

The NEH Institute will help me redesign my India and China units, with a more accurate teaching of the cultural impact of religions in East Asia. Currently, I have developed a unit based on a regional focus of the Himalayas to address the geography theme of human-environment interaction.

Moreover, students will be able to describe and analyze the interaction between physical and human systems in the Himalayan region. I plan to introduce this unit at the beginning of the year, after my introduction of the five themes of geography and map vocabulary unit. The purpose of this unit will help students apply both the five themes and important map skills, but it will also address the specific

Colorado state geography model content standard 5

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