Overview:

SES students participate in Geography Day at the Minnesota Zoo by creating displays and activitities which explain to elementary and middle school student visitors how geography affects the animals and plants on the Tropics Trail, who are mostly from Indonesia. Students research an animal and its habitat, the conditions of that habitat and how its connections to the rest of the world are affecting that habitat—summing up with answering the question “how are humans interacting with the environment in this animals’s habitat?”

Objectives:

1. To identify the physical and human processes that have shaped Indonesia
2. To identify changes in Indonesia over time
3. To examine the interdependence of coutries in South, Southeast and East Asia with each other and with the rest of the world.
4. To synthesize these geographical concepts into an understanding of the processes which are changing the natural habitats of Indonesia.

Grade Level: Eleventh grade

Time: One fifty minute class period

Subjects: This is an interdisciplinary unit co-taught with an English teacher, a biology teacher and a social studies teacher.

Required Materials

• A big map of Southeast Asia.
• My PowerPoint on Conditions and Connections in Indonesia
• Handout map of Southeast Asia Rubric for display

Prerequisite Knowledge:

Optional Technologies:

Students will use the internet to research their animals or plants

Suggested Procedure (Pedagogy):

Opening Many animals at the zoo are from Indonesia.  Why Indonesia?  Because it fits the mission of the zoo to create exhibits for endangered animals.   Why are so many animals from Indonesia endangered?  What is Indonesia?  What is going on over there to create such changes in these animlas habitats?

Development Use PowerPoint to ask and organize questions.  Also hand out maps of Southeast Asia—tell students to take notes on the map to organize their thinking spatially. 

Why study Indonesia? 

Let’s think about Indonesia in terms of its conditions and its connections to the rest of the world. What are conditions?  What do I mean by connections—see the examples?  How might I explain conditions in Minnesota?  How might I explain Minnesota’s connections to the rest of the world?

Now let’s talk about Indonesia.

I really like to talk about demographics—what does that mean?  What do they tell us about conditions in Indonesia? 

Population is a big deal in this part of the world—3 of the 4 most populous countries in the world right here—what does that say about conditions.  You must also understand how dense it is some places—unimaginably dense in some places, and deserted in others.  Why?  Why isn’t populations distributed more evenly?

Where is the population of the world growing?  Why?

Look at the earth.  Now does it make sense why population is distributed unevenly?

This area of very dense populations has many natural disasters.

Let’s look closely at this relief map of Southeast Asia.  What do you see?  Do you think it was easy to travel over land?  Why? How did they travel?  Why did they travel?  Indonesia has been this great crossroad for thousands of years. 

Climates—but the big story is the monsoon.

What did those traders bring with them?

History of trade and colonial times.

Languages—remnants of those old original roots, and also of attempts to foster national unity.

How do people make a living?

What resources do we care about?

What do the Japanese import from Indonesia?

Closing What are conditions in Indonesia—let’s go back to that second slide

What are its connections?  What challenges do its conditions and connections present?

How has habitat been affected?

Suggested Assessment

See checklist for displays for Geography Day

Standards

National Geographic Society 9-12 grade standards on physical and human shaping of places and regions, changes in places and regions over time, and interdependence of places and regions.

Credits:

Jean Unzicker

School of Environmental Studies

12155 Johnny Cake Ridge Road

Apple Valley, MN   55124

(952) 925-3562

gjiab@msn.com