Unit 1: Overview

The Overarching Concept for "Many Faces, Many Places" is Interactions. The six units in the Organizing Idea emphasize the interactions among Texas landforms, rocks and minerals, Native Americans, the first explorers, and the illnesses and diseases the explorers brought to Texas. Connections illustrating how the content interacts are made in the unit introductions.
Unit 2: The Core of the Matter

In this unit students learn about the core, mantle, and crust of the Earth. They also learn about rocks and minerals as they examine the physical properties of rocks and find the weight, mass, volume, and density of rocks. Students compare and contrast rocks and minerals. The conduction of heat is discussed and demonstrated as the students learn that rocks are matter and can change states. They learn that crystals are the building blocks of minerals. Tests are conducted to determine the color, luster, streak, and hardness of minerals in the classroom.
Unit 3: Early Texans and Their Land

In this unit students learn about the four landform regions of Texas and they discover that Texas is the meeting place of four of the five landform regions found in the United States.
Students also learn about the first Texans, the Native Americans, who lived in Texas before 1500. Emphasis is placed on "Human/Environment Interactions: Shaping the Landscape," one of the five themes of geography. Students discover how the Native Americans responded to and modified their Texas environments. They learn that the physical characteristics of the regions had a definite impact on the lives of the first Texans. Students discover the cultural contributions made by the Native Americans and how those contributions continue to influence Texas. In addition, they also learn that Native American tribes had different economic systems.
At the end of this unit the students conduct a mini-study on the indigenous people of Mexico, the Aztecs. They gather information about the Aztecs and compare and contrast a tribe of Native Americans from Texas with the Aztecs.


Unit 4: Exploring Land and Health

The explorers of Texas and diseases of the body are covered in this unit. The connection of these two topics is the interaction of the diseases explorers brought to Texas with the native people living in Texas. This connection is discussed in the introduction. The students investigate the explorers of Texas and create a presentation. After the connection is made between diseases and the explorers, the students learn about communicable and noncommunicable diseases.