Additional resources for further exploration
The development of the 18 national standards that support teaching the six essential elements of geography was supported by the following four organizations: National Geographic Society, National Council for Geographic Education, American Geographical Society and the Association of American Geographers.
Click on the link below to read an article that describes why the standards were developed, who developed them, the process used for their creation, the final published outcome of national geography standards and their relationship to the previously developed five themes.
Geography for Life was first published in 1994 by the Geography Education National Implementation Project (GENIP). At the following link, National Geographic has excerpted the standards, skills, and perspectives from Geography for Life.
http://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/national-geography-standards/
For a better understanding of the six essential elements of geography, explore this list of the 18 standards that comprise these elements.
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/standards/national-geography-standards/
Click on the following link to look at an example of how the six essential elements, 18 standards, and five themes of geography combine to provide a geographic perspective of a region of the world—in this example, East Asia.
