If you’re looking for a fun way for students to explore rural land patterns and traditional housing styles, here is a set of 5 Illustrated Textbook pages on the topic, along with an improved worksheet. Students won’t be disappointed with this one, I promise.

After students read about rural settlement patterns and traditional housing types, you can have them complete the, This is Home worksheet.

The worksheet takes them on an interactive, choose-your-own adventure journey through homes around the world.

The worksheet asks students to observe settlement patterns in bird’s-eye view, dwelling type at eye-level, and the ways that site factors attribute to construction methods.

Students will need Google Earth on a mobile device and camera to scan the provided QR code. Once on the main page, students can zip across the Earth and be invited into homes all over the world. Students then fill out the worksheet based on their discoveries, applying practical knowledge of rural settlement patterns and observations about housing structures that they’ve made in the “field.”

If you’re eager to ditch the ads and snag another worksheet, you can get that too. The added worksheet corresponds with the Illustrated Textbook’s page that illustrates different rural settlement patterns that are seen (or historically seen) around the world.Students can complete this while reading, or the teacher can lecture for the students. Get the whole shebang below.

AP Human Geography Standards:

5.2 SETTLEMENT PATTERNS AND SURVEY METHODS

ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Availability of resources and cultural practices influence agricultural practices and land-use patterns.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Identify different rural settlement patterns and methods of surveying rural settlements.

PSO 5.B.1: Specific agricultural practices shape different rural land-use patterns.

PSO 5.B.2: Rural settlement patterns are classified as clustered, dispersed, or linear.

PSO 5.B.3: Rural survey methods includes metes and bounds, township and range, and long lot.

3.2 CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Cultural practices vary across geographical locations because of physical geography and available resources.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Describe the characteristics of cultural landscapes.

PSO 3.B.1: Cultural landscapes are combinations of physical features, agricultural and industrial practices, religious and linguistic characteristics, evidence of sequent occupancy, and other expressions of culture including traditional and postmodern architecture and land-use patterns.