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Midwest and Southern States

Run the Midwest and Southern States MicroSim Fullscreen

About This MicroSim

This map shows 12 Midwest states and 8 Southern states together, from the Great Lakes in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south. Students can change what the map shows and compare any two states to find out what they share and how they differ.

The map has three views:

  • Regions colors each state by its region: Midwest or South.
  • Farming colors each state by its best-known farm products, such as corn and soybeans, wheat, dairy, cotton and peanuts, rice and sugarcane, or citrus.
  • Major Rivers turns the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, and Tennessee Rivers on or off.

The Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico are always shown, so students can see how water connects the two regions.

How to Use

  1. Hover over a state to see its name. Hover over a river to read a fact about it.
  2. Click a state. Its capital, farming, waterways, and what it is known for appear in the first card.
  3. Click a second state. The second card fills in, and the Same or Different? box tells you whether the two states share a region, a type of farming, or a waterway.
  4. Click a third state to replace the first one, and keep comparing.
  5. Use Regions and Farming to change how the states are colored.
  6. Use Major Rivers to hide or show the rivers.
  7. Reset clears both cards and returns the map to its starting view.

Iframe Embed Code

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/us-geography/sims/central-states/main.html"
        height="602px"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Grade Level

Grades 3-6

Duration

10-15 minutes

Learning Objective

Students will locate the Midwest and Southern states and compare their geographic features (Bloom's level: Analyze).

Prerequisites

  • Students can find the Midwest and the South on a United States map.
  • Students know that a river flows from its source to its mouth.

Activities

  1. Exploration (5 min): Students switch between the Regions and Farming views and describe one pattern they see. For example, which color covers the middle of the Midwest in the Farming view?
  2. Guided Practice (5 min): Students compare Iowa and Louisiana. Ask: Which waterway connects them? How is their farming different, and why might that be? Then compare Minnesota and Mississippi.
  3. Assessment (5 min): Students find two states in different regions that share the Ohio River, and two states in the same region that have different farming. They write one sentence explaining each pair.

Discussion Questions

  • Follow the Mississippi River from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Which states does it touch?
  • Which Midwest states touch the Great Lakes? Which Southern states touch the Gulf of Mexico?
  • Why do you think rice and sugarcane are grown in the South but not in the Midwest?

Assessment

  • Student names the region of a state when it is pointed to on the map.
  • Student uses the comparison box to state one similarity and one difference between two states.
  • Student explains how a river or lake connects a Midwest state to a Southern state.

Data Notes

  • State shapes, rivers, and the Great Lakes come from Natural Earth public domain map data.
  • Each state is colored by one well-known group of farm products. Real states grow many crops, so the Farming view is a simplified picture.
  • The Midwest states follow the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwest region. Eight nearby Southern states are shown.

References

  1. Natural Earth - Public domain map data used for the state shapes, rivers, and lakes.
  2. Census Regions and Divisions of the United States - U.S. Census Bureau.
  3. Mississippi River Facts - National Park Service.
  4. Leaflet - The open-source JavaScript library used to draw the map.