Geography Terms Activities for Fifth Grade

Activities for Fifth Grade: Geography Terms

One of the geography terms activities for fifth grade listed here is a geography dictionary. Additional activities can be found online and those will be referenced later on.

To make a geography dictionary, you will need to cut white copy paper in half, and have some construction paper also cut in half for the cover. Students will need scissors, glue, pencils or pens, crayons, markers, or colored pencils.

Instructions: Print the word at the top of the page and write the definition of it underneath with a pencil or pen. Look in magazines to find pictures to illustrate the word, cut it out and glue underneath the definition. When you are finished, decorate two pieces of construction paper and staple your dictionary together.

Make a Physical Geography Dictionary using the following 15 terms:

Atmosphere - The layer of gases and water vapor that surround the earth.
Barometer – An instrument tat measures the pressure of the atmosphere.
Core - The center of the Earth.
Crust - The outer layer of the Earth.
Erosion: The wearing away of rock and soil.
Fault - A break in the Earth’s crust.
Fossil - Part or traces of ancient life found in sedimentary rock.
Igneous rock - A type of rock that forms when melted rock hardens.
Global warming - The rise in the AEarth’s temperature caused by excess carbon dioxide.
Greenhouse effect - This happens when the atmosphere traps heat from the sun and that in turn warms the Earth.
Mantle - The second layer of rock in the Earth.
Metamorphic rock - Rock that was changed by heat or pressure but did not completely melt.
Pangea - A super-continent which contained all of Earth’s land mass that existed about 225 million years ago.
Sedimentary rock - Rock formed by pressure on layers of sediment.
Volcano - A mountain formed by lava and ash that can erupt.

Online Resources for Geography Worksheets

There are a few sites that have ideas to help with geography terms activities for fifth grade:

National Geographic Education has five lesson plans covering various areas of geography.
TSL Books has worksheets that cover American symbols, a word search puzzle on U. S. rivers, a worksheet on the 48 contiguous states, and map skills worksheets.
There are quizzes and games that cover continents and bodies of water at Internet 4 Classrooms.
There are games for U. S. Geography and World Cultures and Geography at Quia. It has games, movies, and quizzes.

Classroom Games

There are many word games to help students learn definitions of words.

Snowman

One fun one is a twist on the Snowman game. It is like Hangman in reverse. You have two teams and you draw two stick figures, or snowmen, or whatever on the board, with each having the same number of parts. You need between 12 and 15 parts. You can call this game Invisible Man or Melting Snowman. Anyway, when a team gets the answer right, they erase one part of the opposing team’s man or snowman. When the man or snowman is gone, the other team wins.

Jeopardy

Another way to review definitions of geography words is to play Jeopardy. Make a simple game board with five or six categories, with point values ranging from 100 to 500 for Jeopardy and 200 to 1000 for Double Jeopardy. Save a really hard question for Final Jeopardy.

At Puzzlemaker you can make your own crossword puzzles. Just pick the size of puzzle, put in the words and definitions, and it will create a puzzle for you to print out and use. You can also make crossword puzzles at Crossword Puzzle Games.