Type:
Solution Manual
Resource:
Discovering Physical Geography
Edition:
Canadian Edition
Author(s):
Alan F. Arbogast Lisa Ford Daryl Dagesse
Arbogast, Ford, and Dagesse, Discovering Physical Geography, Canadian Edition
INSTRUCTOR’S MANUAL PREAMBLE In an attempt to cover many different types of learners and different courses, each of these chapters presents several suggestions for approaches and learning activities that may be utilized in the classroom. It is pointing out the obvious to say that each student is different; of course, each class is also different. Something that works well with one class may not work the following semester with a different class. Throughout a semester you might select only a few activities or suggestions—those that will best serve to engage your student population. The manual is written primarily for a first-year physical geography class that does not have an accompanying lab section, so it includes a number of simple hands-on demonstrations to be done by the instructor, as well as hands-on student activities; some of these activities have been adapted from typical lab exercises. It is hoped that they might engage students, or deepen their understanding and appreciation of the specific concept or topic in physical geography. At the outset of this manual, it is perhaps important to point out to beginning instructors that one need not follow the textbook sequentially. You should feel free to deal with chapters in a different order, and plan your syllabus according to your preferences regarding student progress and comprehension. Indeed, greater flexibility can be a distinct advantage because experience shows that it is always effective to take advantage of some recent event, often an extreme weather event or other natural disaster. “Bad news” can serve to capture student attention by showing the relevance of physical geography to living in the here and now, and to understand the forces that shape all our lives, even if we are located distant from the events. It is, of course, no small task to rearrange the entire syllabus, since assignment dates and more have to be reorganized, but the impact on classroom attention, understanding, and appreciation is well worth the minor effort. If some catastrophic event occurs before the beginning of the semester (e.g., the December 2004 Sumatran earthquake and tsunami; the 1993 Northridge quake; Hurricane Katrina 2005; Haiti earthquake 2010; Hurricane Sandy 2012), you can be prepared in advance. There may be other times, however, when an event occurs during the semester. You should then consider moving immediately to that section—for example, the 2010 Chile earthquake—We will postpone our discussion of atmospheric temperature and moisture, and look at the earthquakes in. .. Therefore it is wise always to have a footnote to this effect on your syllabus (e.g., “The instructor reserves the right to change topics or policy to meet the needs of this class” or “tentative lecture schedule for the term”). In similar fashion, even trivial current affairs can bring a new perspective to student learning: a movie star gets heat exhaustion while jogging—depending on where you are in the semester, you may introduce the humidex (https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/humidex-vsheat-index-whats-the-difference/10243) or remind students that they know about it from their class of (two or whatever) weeks ago; too much snow in Toronto and Montreal—look at the pattern of winter storms (and maybe discuss the misused term global warming); the impact of El Niño on North America’s western coast in California and British Columbia brings mudslides and debris flows (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-coast-should-brace-formonster-el-nino-year-uvic-professor/article26468934)—look at mass wasting and fluvial erosion; a volcanic eruption in Iceland throws international travel into disarray—what an opportunity to introduce (or revise) volcanism. These and many other suggestions in this manual attempt to address an important issue in our Instructor’s Manual
Preamble
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Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd. Unauthorized copying, distribution, or transmission of this page is strictly prohibited.
Arbogast, Ford, and Dagesse, Discovering Physical Geography, Canadian Edition
classrooms: Increasing numbers of students come to our classes underprepared, with poor reading skills, even worse writing skills, and unable to perform even simple arithmetic calculations (such as division by ten). Furthermore, they may not bring the motivation to learn any of the concepts or skills of physical geography; they are in your classroom because it is a required course or they must take a science class, and they have heard that physical geography is “easier” than the alternatives (biology, for example). Teaching physical geography can be demanding, as well as rewarding. Therefore many of the activities and approaches suggested in this manual attempt not merely to make the material relevant to students’ lives, but also to engage them with our discipline, while not compromising learning standards. If you are fortunate enough to teach an enthusiastic group of students who will read and think about the importance and relevance of physical geography, it is wonderful to involve them in group discussions; to have them use their personal technology (phones, laptops or tablets) to employ geographic tools such as Google Earth, online GIS, and more; to challenge them with critical thinking and discussion activities. But for the majority of us, it may be most effective simply to concentrate in class on brief examples of processes or phenomena that students can see, feel, and relate to, and to use very simple in-class activities or homework tasks. For young urban students whose lives are filled with popular media and whose main pastime is texting and social media, these new geographic perspectives can be engaging and even empowering. It is exhilarating when a former student wins first prize for an undergraduate paper presentation, and equally memorable when a student relates with delight in an upper year course that they really enjoyed being in your class!” As you have the privilege of taking your students on a journey into geography, you will truly be able to show them that “Geography Matters.”
Instructor’s Manual
Preamble
2
Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd. Unauthorized copying, distribution, or transmission of this page is strictly prohibited.
Arbogast, Ford, and Dagesse, Discovering Physical Geography, Canadian Edition
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY In this chapter, the student is introduced to geography as a field of study, and specifically to physical geography, via the concept of Earth’s four spheres: atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. This introductory chapter serves to emphasize the distinctive nature of physical geography, in its scientific approach to the nature and problems of humanenvironment interactions. The value of geographic literacy to contemporary young Canadians is stressed.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES Upon completion of the chapter, the student should be able to: Learning Objective 1.
2. 3.
Comprehend the character and scope of geography as a scientific discipline, and define the subdisciplines of physical geography. Explain the concept of a natural system and define the four Earth spheres. Describe how the scientific method is used in physical geography.
Instructor’s Manual
Section Reference The Scope of Geography
Defining Physical Geography Physical Geography and the Scientific Method
Chapter 1 – Introduction to Physical Geography
1-1
Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd. Unauthorized copying, distribution, or transmission of this page is strictly prohibited.
Arbogast, Ford, and Dagesse, Discovering Physical Geography, Canadian Edition
Lecture Lead-ins/Transitions The first class can follow very different individual approaches. If there is not some dramatic and newsworthy event to open the first day, as described in the Preamble, you might begin with a few pictures of spectacular global or Canadian landscapes (e.g., Gros Morne National Park, Jasper National Park, or Kluane National Park) or of extreme events such as a tornado, hurricane, landslide, or volcanic eruption. Some of your students may have seen similar phenomena or visited these locations and you can ask them to relate their impressions and feelings. Others will know such phenomena from movies and television, perhaps with erroneous or exaggerated special effects. A discussion of other branches of geography is not appealing at this stage and will do nothing to show your own passion or love of geography and the physical world. It may be more important to make sure students know that physical geography is not (merely) making maps or studying rocks. Since most of them may not have studied geography since early in high school as a component of social studies or Canadian studies, their ideas about what geography encompasses may be vague to nonexistent, and their expectations may be surprising to you as the instructor.
Lecture Demonstrations The remainder of the first class is usually best spent on practical matters—the scope of the class, the four spheres, and the scientific method, skimming the chapter titles and the syllabus topics, to show the breadth and depth of this field of study. The four spheres is a valuable model that is easy to understand and conveys the central theme of the class: Everything is connected to everything else (Barry Commoner’s first law of ecology). An alternative for this first meeting might be to introduce students to the idea of scales—human, Earth, and space. You can ask: Is the Earth large or small? Three useful visuals here are: • PHOTO—Earthrise from Apollo 8. (available from the NASA website).Taken in 1968 by William Anders, it marked the new, holistic approach to the Earth that characterizes physical geography today. It is recognized as one of the top 100 photos of all time by Time magazine (http://100photos.time.com/photos/nasa-earthrise-apollo-8). In 2015 NASA released a new high resolution Earthrise image taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/lro-earthrise-2015). •
PHOTO - Contrast it with the Pale Blue Dot, an image made by Voyager in 1989, at the urging of Carl Sagan (“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.”). o This always reminds me of David Quammen’s description of humans in “The Flight of the Iquana: A sidelong view of Science Nature” (1998) as “mortal creatures on a slowdying planet, in the ocean of space,” but students do not necessarily like this view!
Instructor’s Manual
Chapter 1 – Introduction to Physical Geography
1-2
Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd. Unauthorized copying, distribution, or transmission of this page is strictly prohibited.