Middle School Geography

Planning to teach middle school geography? OER Project has resources to help students learn the basics of geography and how geographic skills can help them understand the Universe, the Earth, the biosphere, and the history of humanity. Lessons include clear directions, printable worksheets, and built-in checks for understanding to help students with map skills, human migration, climate and biomes, and more. Use a single activity, a full lesson, or combine them into a short unit. Everything is free, standards-aligned, and designed for real classrooms.

Teaching Middle School Geography

Middle School Geography Lesson Plan

Free, ready-to-teach lesson for grades 6 through 8. Build map skills, explore human migration, and connect climate and biomes to the real world using trusted Big History materials.

Blog: Here be dragons: Teaching world history in maps

How can maps help us understand the worldview of different societies? This blog explores over 15,000 years of maps, from Europe to Polynesia.

Community: Ask Me Anything: Geography edition

How does geography help students understand history and the world around us? Geography tips and tricks featuring National Geographic Explorer Rachel Hansen.

Lessons Connecting Geography, the Universe, and the Earth

What is Big History?

Introduction to Geography

Students need the basics of geography before they can dig into analyzing maps and geographic data. Let’s start with exploring geography and scale using maps, both regular and “mental.”

History of the Universe and Earth

Learn about the fiery early days of our planet and why this one planet among countless others increased the complexity of the Universe in a way that may be unique.

Map Skills, Spatial Thinking, and Plate Tectonics

Build geography basics, teach students to think of geography in terms of the largest scales, and then, zoom back down to Earth to explore plate tectonics.

Geography: Mental Maps

We create mental maps every day. What can you learn about scale by creating a mental map of your school?

Geography: Map of the Observable Universe

Explore a special map of the Universe that stretches back billions of years and took 15 years to make.

Geography: Plate Tectonics

Can maps really predict the future? Learn how geographers are like detectives solving the mysteries of the future.

Lessons Connecting Geography and Life on Earth

Geography and the Biosphere

Students evaluate how geography and climate have impacted life on Earth. They’ll become geography detectives as they analyze climate data and use their map-reading skills.

All humans evolved in Africa, but what made our ancestors journey outside of Africa to eventually populate the whole world? Journey through time and across continents to investigate human migration.

Biomes, the Environment, and Human Migration

Connect global patterns to local places by helping students investigate how geography and climate impact life on Earth, including the push-pull factors that influence human migration.

Geography: Biomes

You can tell a lot about how the climate and environment impact life on Earth. Use your detective skills to determine the locations in each mystery graph.

Geography: Earth in Motion

About 100 million years ago, dinosaurs could be found on all over the world. How and why did Earth change after that to leave some animals stranded to evolve on only one continent?

Geography: Migration and Climate

What factors pushed or pulled early humans to migrate to certain regions of the world?

Lessons Connecting Geography and Human History

Agriculture & Complex Societies

Agricultural Revolution

In what ways did going from foraging to farming revolutionize society? Let’s dig deeper into the details of exactly how agriculture changed human life—for better and for worse.

Industrial Revolution

Fossil fuels were the key to unlocking a huge amount of energy. Using these fuels has led to increases in population and innovation, but they’ve also caused pollution and climate change.

Farming, Industrialization, and Globalization

Explore activities on how humans changed the environment through farming, the use of fossil fuels, and advances in manufacturing and transportation.

Geography: The Agricultural Revolution

Can you predict where some of the first crops were grown? Use your geography skills to determine the correct locations.

Geography: Industrialization Mystery

What were the ingredients and Goldilocks Conditions for industrialization? Time to use your geographic detective skills to decide why industrialization began in one place but not the other.

Geography: Supply Chain

You can buy clothes, food, and technology that’s made thousands of miles away. Time to research how all that stuff gets to you.

Geography-Related Assessments in Big History

Prewriting: Earth’s Structure and Processes

How has our understanding of Earth’s structure and processes changed over time? Time to unpack the prompt and brainstorm how you’ll respond.

DBQ Sources: Earth’s Structure and Processes

Use evidence from the sources to support your response to how our understanding of Earth’s structure and processes have changed.

Writing: Earth’s Structure and Processes

You’ve brainstormed the topic and read the sources, now it’s time to write!

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