Omni Learning Guide to Geography

MEET THE MOST IMPORTANT FRIEND YOU’LL EVER HAVE! Think of your family, your closest friend, a beloved pet. It’s only natural you’d want to know everything you can about them. But we scarcely ever think how much we don’t know about the one friend we could never live without — the Earth, the only home we’ll have throughout our entire lives. We study geography because we want to learn about anything that has to do with Earth or anything that lives on Earth. This delightful, comprehensive book will teach you, step-by-step:

• • To understand basic physical systems that affect our everyday life.

• To learn the location, physical, and cultural characteristics of places in order to function more effectively in our interdependent world.
• To understand how geography has always played — and always will play — important roles in the evolution of people, ideas, places, and environments.
• To develop a mental map of your community and the world so you can understand the “where” of places and events.
• To explain how human and physical systems have arranged and changed the surface of the Earth.
• To understand the relationship between the physical environment and society.
• To provide insight for wise management decisions about how the planet’s resources should be used.
• To understand global interdependence and to become a better global citizen.

Learning geography helps us develop an understanding of the interdependence of our world and how we are connected through location, place, movement, region, history, and culture. This understanding helps build awareness for cultural diversity — how and why people live the way they do. Lorraine Gerstl, bestselling author of Omni Guide to Reading Comprehension Strategies, is truly a woman for all seasons! She taught deaf children in her native South Africa before migrating to the United States, where she raised her own children, then recommenced her teaching career on California’s Monterey Peninsula, where she taught for nearly three decades at Robert Louis Stevenson Lower School and Santa Catalina as its beloved third grade teacher. Since her “retirement” in 2017, she and Margie Lotz, a colleague from Santa Catalina, formed Omni Learning Center, which provides educational enrichment for home schoolers. Omni has recently expanded into teaching unhoused women at Gathering for Women not only to return to the active workforce, but to reclaim self-respect and social validation. Lorraine has produced, directed, and acted in plays, musicals, variety shows, picked up a National Disney Teacher of the Year nomination, and traveled a good slice of the world in the process. An editor and internationally published writer, who won’t hesitate to stretch her students’ reach to the stars, she still revels in her favorite title – “Mom.”