5 Themes of

Geography 5 W’s

Location

Questions / Definition

ò  Where?

ò  Where is the place?

Sentences

ò  Philadelphia is north of Delaware.

ò  Philadelphia is west of New Jersey.

ò  Philadelphia is east of Montgomery County.

ò  Philadelphia is south of Bucks County.

Place

Questions / Definition

ò  What do you see?

(plants, animals, weather, buildings, river, hills, food, languages, beliefs, …)

Sentences

Philadelphia has a river.

Philadelphia has pretzels.

Human / Environment Interaction

Questions / Definition

ò  Why? How?

ò  How do people change the environment?

ò  How does the environment change people?

ò  Why does this happen?

(roads, building snow plow, …)

People build houses and roads.

Sentences

When it snows, people shovel snow.

Movement

Questions / Definition

ò  Who? What?

ò  Who is moving?

ò  What is moving?

ò  How are people, ideas or things moving?

Sentences

Information is moving.

People ride on a bus.

Region

Questions / Direction

ò  What? How?

ò  What is similar about a place? How are places similar or different? (temperature, land, language, religion, work, …)

Sentences

The Northeast Region has four seasons.

The land in the Midwest Region is flat.

5 Ws

Location: Where?

Place: What?

Human / Environment Interaction:

Why? How?

Movement: Who? What?

Region: What? How?