Geographic Perspectives with Elementary Students: The Silk Road

The purpose of this study is to investigate elementary students' explanations of how physical features of the land influence the location of humanly defined structures including trade routes, such as the silk routes. The silk routes were a series of caravan trade routes that extended from Turkey to China and were located as far south as India and as far north as Russia. The trade activity on these routes ebbed and flowed depending on the protection available from the rulers of China. The routes existed from the 2nd century B.C.E. to the 15th century C.E. when they were replaced by maritime trade routes. Four teachers, two sixth grade, one fourth grade and one multi-level bilingual teacher, used a geography lesson on the silk routes with thirty-eight students, eight sixth graders, five fourth graders and twenty-five multi-level bilingual students, who were primarily Spanish speakers. The students were asked first to consider physical maps of China and central Asia and consider several questions based on the area's terrain. The students were then asked to locate western Turkey and Xian, the old capital of China. Working in pairs they determined a route from one place to the other taking into consideration terrain, climate and a lack of mechanized transportation. In completing this assignment the sixth graders had more prior knowledge of China because it is part of their curriculum in the sixth grade. Also they had more knowledge of maps. They had some difficulties with scale and did not at first take into full consideration the topography of the area the silk routes crossed. Several of the fourth graders were able to draw a route from Turkey to China that closely approximated one of the historic trade routes. As the sixth graders did, they had difficulties with scale. Some thought that it would be feasible to walk from Turkey to China. The bilingual students needed reinforcement of the maps with other maps and could have used more visual aids, showing the rued Tianshan and Himalayan mountain ranges and the forbidding climate of the deserts of central Asia. The bilingual teacher supplemented the maps with a map analysis sheet and some of the students were able to approximate the silk routes. All of the students in the study needed to extend their investigation with more visual materials so that their understanding of the silk routes could be extended.