This unit covers just two countries in North America: the United States and Canada. The continent of North America actually includes many more countries, of course—it extends all the way to the border between Panama and Colombia and includes the islands of the Caribbean as well. We’ll be covering all of those countries in the next unit on Latin America.
Most students find this unit on the United States and Canada to be the easiest unit in the course (in sharp contrast to Unit 1 on Planet Earth, which most students find to be one of the more challenging units). There are a couple of factors that make Unit 2 especially easy to master: it includes the fewest countries of any unit in the course, and it focuses on one country— the United States—that most students are likely to be fairly familiar with already. Chances are that at some point in your academic career (probably by sixth grade at the latest!), you’ve already been required to commit the fifty states to memory. All you’re doing in this unit, then, is simply adding a little polish to the knowledge you already have.
Most students find this unit on the United States and Canada to be the easiest unit in the course (in sharp contrast to Unit 1 on Planet Earth, which most students find to be one of the more challenging units). There are a couple of factors that make Unit 2 especially easy to master: it includes the fewest countries of any unit in the course, and it focuses on one country— the United States—that most students are likely to be fairly familiar with already. Chances are that at some point in your academic career (probably by sixth grade at the latest!), you’ve already been required to commit the fifty states to memory. All you’re doing in this unit, then, is simply adding a little polish to the knowledge you already have.
Even though you probably won’t find this unit to be much of a challenge, however, this isn’t the time to become complacent. Remember that the objective of the course is for you to be able to describe all of the principal geographic features of the course, and the comprehensive exams at the end of the semester will measure the extent to which you’ve met that objective. As a result, you should be reviewing the material from Unit 1 while you’re preparing for the test on Unit 2. The key to success in this course is constant review; you don’t want any of the knowledge from any of the units to slip out of memory—instead, you want to build permanent knowledge through frequent use and application of the information.
Objectives
This chapter covers the material for Unit 2 of the course, which is presented in Region 8 of the required textbook, Places of the World. Region 8 includes a set of “Review Exercises” that summarize the information students are responsible for knowing for this Unit. The actual test questions for Unit Quiz # 2 will be selected from the list of questions that begins on the following page (the Unit Quiz will feature 50 of the following questions, chosen at random).
At the conclusion of this Unit, you will be able to describe the fundamental geographic features (population, language, area, capital, economy, and sovereignty) of the two countries in northern North America, and to identify the location of each country.
No comments:
Post a Comment