Renaissance Geography

This worksheet helps students in Grades 5, 6, and 7 explore how geography influenced history during the Italian Renaissance by comparing Florence and Venice. Through a focused informational passage and critical-thinking questions, students analyze how inland and coastal locations shaped trade, art, scholarship, and cultural influence while practicing close reading, geographic reasoning, and evidence-based written responses.

Learning Goals

• Renaissance History & Culture (Grades 5-7) – Understand the roles of Florence and Venice during the Renaissance
• Human-Environment Interaction – Analyze how geographic location affects economic and cultural development
• Trade & Economic Geography – Explain how access to rivers, seas, and trade routes influenced wealth and influence
• Evidence-Based Writing – Respond to questions using complete sentences and details from the text

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource – Designed to align with middle grades social studies and ELA standards
• Comparative Analysis Focus – Encourages deeper thinking by examining similarities and differences between two cities
• Flexible Classroom Use – Suitable for classwork, homework, discussion, assessment, or enrichment
• Low-Prep Format – Ready-to-print worksheet with clear prompts and student-friendly structure

This Renaissance Geography worksheet helps students connect physical geography to historical outcomes while strengthening comprehension, reasoning, and written explanation skills. By examining how Florence and Venice used their locations to shape culture and trade, learners gain deeper insight into the relationship between geography and history. It’s a meaningful, no-prep resource for both classroom instruction and homeschool learning.

This worksheet is part of our Italy Worksheets collection.