Lecture notes on changing speech and culture relations in Southwest Virginia. Historical overview of Southern Appalachian Speech practices with a Virginia emphasis.

The first of three lessons on Eastern Hemisphere, students examine maps to discover the link between the physical environment and the distribution of cultures. Key questions: How did physical geography influence the distribution of cultures within the eastern hemisphere?; How does the physical environment link and divide regions?

This article from the Virginia Geographer assists teachers to understand the geographic theme of region. It applies the region concept to the study of Virginia that goes well beyond the Virginia Standards of Learning limited use of landform regions. Region concept is applied to a number of human systems including transportation, economic, and urban systems.

Introuction to physical and human geography of Southwest Virginia, highlighting places visited by AP Human Geography teachers. Coal mining is highlighed, focusing on resource extraction techniques, impacts on the environment and possible solutions.

Broadly this lesson examines how natural resources shape the economic, social, political, and environmental features of Southwest Virginia. Students should be able to recognize economic and natural resources in the region. In turn, they can evaluate the affect of these resources on economic, social, political, and environmental development. This helps students understand alternative perspectives and further their own sense of place, so that they can work to solve problems and develop positive outcomes for other groups of people.

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 This lesson will help students differentiate between physical and cultural regions as well as categorize regions as either formal, functional, or perceptual.  Students will differentiate among the three categories of regions on a Google Worksheet, and students will label a physiographic map of Virginia.   (Teachers will need to make a copy of all the Google Docs, Forms, Worksheets, etc. for themselves.)

Summary of three-day event centered on Southside Virginia that involved both classroom instruction and a field experience focused on curriculum topics such as regional cultural identity, sense of place, economic development models/approaches, and agritourism ; skills such as formal observation, data collection, landscape analysis, speculation and spatial analysis; and processes such as cultural diffusion, migration, deindustrialization, economic restructuring, and globalization. A field guide was developed by academy co-coordinator Shannon Castelo to provide teachers with materials and examples of teaching activities they can incorporate into their classroom instruction.

Summary of three-day event in which teachers participated in classroom instruction and field experiences that focused on regional cultural identity, folk cultures, language and dialects, economic development, mining and resource extraction, environmental determinism, possibilism, and human development indicators; skills such as formal observation, data collection, landscape analysis, speculation and spatial analysis; and processes such as cultural diffusion, migration, deindustrialization, economic restructuring, and globalization. Many links to resources.

Lecture notes on Southwest Virginia economic and human health. This region has high unemployement and is in transition from an economy centered on coal. There are a number of obstacles including remote location and decline of the coal industry in the United States.

Students will pretend that they are exploring North America for the first time. They will describe and draw features of major geographic regions of North America: Coastal Plain, Appalachian Mountains, Canadian Shield, Interior Lowlands, Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Basin and Range, and Coastal Range.

This article from the Virginia Geographer assists teachers to understand Virginia's physical geography and given overviews of each of its five natural regions. The main elemenst of physical geography (landform regions and drainage systems, climate, vegetation, and wildlife) are all interrelated and combine to make Virginia and each of its regions unique places. In addition they influence the human geography of the Commonwealth, past and present.