Embedded within the high school geography course's unit on urbanization, which serves as a bridge between the study of physical and human geography, this module asks students to examine the effects of urbanization on both people and the environment. Students consider the variety and scope of urbanization's effects, weigh the evidence they have collected, and ultimately argue whether those effects are, on balance, more positive or more negative. Students will explore the effect of urbanization through a diverse array of print and multimedia resources, looking at urbanization in general as well as two sub-topics: urban heat islands and slums.
Prior to beginning this module, students should have developed an understanding of cities focused on the first understanding and guiding question in the Urbanization unit: Why do people tend to build large cities? After focusing in on the "I can" statements associated with that first understanding, students are prepared to dive into an exploration of the positive and negative effects of urbanization through this module. Students' study of the effects of urbanization will be guided by the Colorado Academic Standards, particularly Geography Grade Level Expectation 3, "The interconnected nature of the world, it people, and places."
Students will be asked to practice key skills that will allow them to make meaning of individual resources as well as connect learning across resources. The focus Common Core reading standard for this module is the grade-level-band RH.9-10.7, which asks students to "Integrate quantitative or technical analysis (e.g. charts, research data) with qualitative analysis in print or digital text." This standard derives from the college and career readiness standard CCR.R.7, which states, "Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually, quantitatively, and in words." Students will also focus on drawing evidence from print and multimedia resources in order to support their response to the teaching task prompt (WHST.9-10.9).
Students will write their response to the teaching task prompt in the form of an argumentative blog post. With three blog posts included as texts in the module, students will have seen that blog posts can take on many forms, including arguments. As part of their support towards writing their own argumentative blog post, students will examine the structure of the blog posts they've read, compare those structures, and choose which blog post/s they will use as models for their own writing.
During this module, students will be asked to complete some work independently, some with a partner, and some with a collaborative group. Collaboration is critical for students as they build practice with speaking & listening standards. It is recommended that you consider the purpose of each mini-task that asks for collaboration and decide whether students will benefit most from working with a data-based pre-assigned partner or group, or whether students can work with a more random "Meet Me At" partner or quad (formed by two sets of "Meet Me At" partners joining together). Filling out the cities "Meet Me At" collaborative tool is written into the first mini-task in the Preparing for the Task cluster, so you will be able to quickly activate partners and quads with that tool as needed throughout the module. In addition to the "Meet Me At" tool, students are also provided with a set of sentence stems to support collaborative conversations about text. The sentence stems are introduced early on in the Reading Process, and referred to in instructional strategies wherever students are asked to collaborate. An area, or areas, of focus within the sentence stems tool are called out in each collaborative mini-task in order to support students in meeting that mini-task's objective.
For description of strategies, see the Content Literacy Strategies Collection at ldc.dpsk12.org/resources.
