Students interpret aerial photography, learning how to use shapes and patterns to describe urban, suburban and rural communities.

Ask the students to think about their neighborhood and get a mental picture of their community. Ask the students to think abut what they see? What does their community look like? What types of buildings are located there? What type of shapes and patterns do you see? Accept all reasonable answers.

Ask the students what buildings are in their neighborhood. Record those answers on the board or chart paper. Go back through the list, what shapes would each of those buildings look like?

Distribute the aerial photograph cards of the urban, suburban, and rural communities. Have students work in cooperative groups and ask the students to look at the shapes in the pictures. What could the different shapes represent? Note which shapes are buildings. Look at the buildings in the grid areas. Have students count the number of buildings inside the grid areas in each photograph. Record the number of buildings.

After the students have finished counting the number of buildings in the grid, discuss some similarities and differences in each photograph. Guide student discussion to relate the number of buildings to the number of people in the area. Which photograph has the most buildings? Which photograph has the most people or highest population?

Which photograph may represent a city? Which may represent a country area? What does the third photograph represent? Introduce the terms urban, suburban and rural. Discuss these terms in relation to population. Share with the students that urban refers to a city environment; suburban refers to the area right outside the city where houses and small open spaces are mixed; and rural refers to the country, where there are very few houses. Discuss with the students what major features are found in urban, suburban and rural communities.

Ask students to look at the three photographs again. What additional features do they see in each community? Are their any similar structures to their own community or neighborhood? Randomly ask groups which community in which they live.

What other features do they see in the photographs? Are there similar features in all three communities? What features are unique to only one community?