Teaching the Five Themes of Geography - Place and Regions

Place and Regions can be abstract concepts, but once the definitions are understood, they're easy.

Place is what makes one place different than another. This can include physical characteristics such as the land or human characteristics like the culture of a group of people.

Regions are simply areas that share one or more qualities/characteristics.

Teaching the Five Themes of Geography - Location

Location is of course where something is. However, there is more than one way to specify location.

The first is absolute or exact location. In geography, this is most often done by using latitude and longitude.

The second way to specify location is relative location. This is location based on references to other places or things. For example, I might say my house is near the corner of Oak and Pine. Or, I might say my house is 2 miles west of Interstate-80. These are both relative locations.