COMPARING CULTURES IN MARINE WEST COAST CLIMATES
AUTHOR: Fred Willman
GRADE LEVEL: 7th Grade
TIME: 5 class periods
FORMAT: research, creating a table, written summary report
MATERIALS: written materials provided in lesson, encyclopedias, books describing cultures in at least moderate detail, pencil or pen
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE NEEDED: none
OBJECTIVES:
GEOGRAPHY STANDARDS AND SKILLS
Essential Element 5 – Environment and Society
Standard 15 – How Physical Systems Affect Human Systems
Knowledge Statement 1 – Human Responses to Variations in Physical Systems
5-8 Skill Set 4 – Analysis
Skill #3 – Interpret and synthesize information obtained from a variety of sources such as graphs, charts, tables, diagrams, photographs, documents, and interviews.
OPENING THE LESSON: Students read about cultures throughout the world who live in marine west coast climates to learn about their histories, cultures, and lifestyles.
DEVELOPING THE LESSON: Students create a table comparing the cultures they studied to discover similarities and differences between them.
CONCLUDING THE LESSON: Students discuss and draw conclusions about the effect of the physical environment upon people all over the world who live in the same climate. In particular, they reflect upon the effect of the similar climate of all these people, but also the effects of the land, water, and biological characteristics of their environment. They are to speculate upon the reasons for not only the similarities of the various cultures, but the differences as well.
Marine West Coast Climate Cultures
The marine west coast climate is one of the two rarest of all the major climates in the world. It accounts for only about 4% of all the land on earth. The Mediterranean climate is the other rare climate. Both climates are located right next to each other mostly along the west coast of continents in the middle latitudes. The Mediterranean climate replaces the marine west coast climate as one travels toward the equator in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
Sometimes the marine west coast climate is called the mid-latitude marine climate. It is characterized by abundant precipitation and moderate temperatures year round. All four seasons occur, but summers are mild and so are winters. This is because of the effects of being near oceans and ocean currents that affect winds, humidity, precipitation, temperature, and air pressure. There are many cloudy, foggy days all year in this climate. But, vegetation and wildlife are both large and abundant because of the weather, which provides abundant moisture and a long growing season of moderate temperatures.
In most parts of the world where this climate occurs the landscape is mountainous and islands are abundant. Although the climate helped create the islands because of the actions of alpine glaciers, the climate is not responsible for the presence of mountains. That is just a coincidence. However, mountains do not need to be present to have such a climate. The largest land area in the world where this climate occurs is on the North European Plain where the land is flat and low in elevation.
On a world climate map you can see that the marine west coast climate occurs in a small section of North America, South America, Tasmania and New Zealand in the Pacific Ocean, coastal sections of Scandinavia in Europe, and the North European Plain region of Europe. It does not occur in Asia or Antarctica, and barely occurs in Africa, and Australia.
Your Task
You are going to study several places in the world with this climate as well as rugged coastal mountains. You are going to identify ways in which the people who live in these widely separated and isolated environments are similar and different from each other in every way racially and culturally. You are going to list your findings in two tables that will make it easy to compare the various cultures you study. Then you will use these comparisons of similarities and differences to draw conclusions about the effect of the physical environment upon people all over the world living under these similar physical conditions.
The entire class will make ten tables. There will be five regions of the world compared. Each region will be compared during two different times in history – during the past and during the present. Each will be about a different mountainous marine west coast climate region of the. These five regions are the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, Tasmania, New Zealand, The southwest coast of South America in Chile, and the coast of Norway in Europe. The class should divide up into five committees. Each committee is responsible for studying one of the regions. In each region, students should list the categories of housing, clothing, food, economics (wealth, jobs, natural resources), population, religion, customs, and movement (transportation and communication).
Each committee will make two lists of identical categories for their region. One will be used to list information about people in these regions before about 1950. The other will be about the people who live in these regions today.
Once the information is collected and written down, each committee presents their findings to the others. Now the entire class should look for similarities and differences between the lists of regions from both the past and the present. Conclusions or generalizations should be listed in sentences if they are at least mostly true. Then the class should speculate about why these similarities and differences occurred. Then you need to have a class a discussion about what information would be needed to prove or disprove these generalizations, and where that information might be obtained.