If you want your students to start engaging with new sources and happen to be studying the five themes of geography, here is a worksheet for you.

Step 1: Have your kids learn about the five themes of geography via lecture, research, or article. Here are good summary notes provided by Stanislaus University if you need a place to start.

Step 2: The Five Themes of Geography in Practice together and let the kids work either alone or in groups to find current event article that can relate to each of the five themes.

I’ve found this best done as an in-class activity to help answer their questions and guide their thinking. I have students type in a topic in Google and then click on news to see what interesting news articles pop up. Some students might struggle with creative thought here and try to simply type in “Location” or “Five Themes of Geography” which will typically not yield good search results. Tell them to refer back to their notes and try to think of topics that would fall under each category (i.e. “trucks and railroads” under MOVEMENT).

Step 3: Debrief and review with students what different articles they found for each. They can then discuss why some work better than others. It is also a good time to discuss how some articles will probably fit into more than one theme of geography.