Regions

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Throughout this series, Themes of Geography, you have been learning about the five themes of geography.

If you missed a Related Lesson or want a refresher, go to the right-hand sidebar.

Geographical themes help us organize different aspects of geography to make it easier to understand and describe different places, people, and cultures. So far, you have learned about location, place, human-environment interactions, and movement. Take a few minutes to review what you have learned by completing the fill-in-the-blank activity. Type the correct answers into each of the blanks. When you are finished, click the blue check button to check your work. If you have a hard time answering any of the questions, it would be a good idea to go back and review the previous Related Lessons in this series before moving forward.

In this lesson, you will learn about the final theme of geography. The fifth theme of geography is regions. A region is any unit of space that is unified by some geographic or cultural characteristic. The world can be broken down into a few regions or thousands of regions. For example, you could identify seven different regions on Earth by naming each of the continents, or you could identify thousands of regions by naming every city on Earth. The map below shows regions grouped by continent:

Regions can be identified by the names of continents, countries, counties, and cities. For example, you may live in Lexington, Kentucky. Regions can also be identified with geographic titles, such as the Midwest or the Middle East. These are not formal names for a region, but most people have an idea of the area being discussed when they hear those terms. Another geographic factor that can shape a region is climate. The map below illustrates how regions are formed based on their average temperature and precipitation:

Regions can also be grouped by cultures. For example, you may identify a region based on the language spoken by the majority of the people or by the economic status of an area. The following map breaks Europe down into different regions based on the primary language spoken in each region:

_{Image, via Wikimedia Commons, by Andrei nacu and edited by Ervidervi, Komita and Hayden120 is licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.}

Think about where you live.

• In what region do you live?

Come up with at least three different ways to name your region. For example, you could say Spain, Mediterranean climate, and Spanish-speaking.

After you have come up with at least three different ways to name the region where you live, move on to the Got It? section to practice what you have learned.