AP Human Geography



AP Human Geography

2014-2015

Cornerstone Charter Academy

Miss Kelsey Evans

Teacher Information:

Academics:

•Undergraduate Degree: The Florida State University; Bachelor of Arts, History

•Graduate Degree: University of Central Florida; Masters of Arts in Teaching, Social Science Education

Contact Information:

•Email: kevans@

If you have any questions regarding the course, please do not hesitate to call or email. I will respond in an orderly fashion, and will facilitate with any needs the student may have.

Course Rationale and Description:

This Advanced Placement college-level course introduces students to the “systematic study of geographic patterns and processes that have shaped human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface.” Throughout this course students will employ critical thinking and investigative skills in order to examine the relationships between “human social organization and its environmental consequences” using the tools of a geographer. The course attempts to help students better understand our world and be prepared to answer and act upon the tough decisions our world faces as it strives to function as a global community.

Course Objective:

The five objectives of the APHG course are for students to be able to do the following:

1. Use and think about maps and spatial data.

2. Understand and interpret the implications of associations among phenomena, in places.

3. Recognize and interpret at different scales the relationships among patterns and processes.

4. Define regions and evaluate the regionalization process.

5. Characterize and analyze changing interconnections among places.

Course Textbook and Resources:

1. Provided: The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography by J. Rubenstein, tenth edition.

3. Recommended: AP Human Geography Test-Preparation book (REA, Kaplan, Princeton or Barrons)

4. Recommended: Flash Card resource (Barrons APHG flash cards, online resources, smart phone app for APHG vocabulary, or old fashioned student-made flash cards)

Course Materials:

• spiral notebooks (several & any page amount) with hard plastic cover and pockets

• highlighters

• blue or black pens

• pencils

• several glue sticks

• sticky notes (helpful for annotating notes)

Students will take notes in their spiral notebook, glue in handouts, and interact with the material using their highlighters and sticky notes, creating a portfolio of work that will help them stay organized and prepare them for the APHG exam in May. Students are free to type their reading notes if they like, but it is important that they take THEIR OWN NOTES and not copy from another student. The value is in actually reading and taking the notes themselves.

Course Expectations:

BEHAVIOR: In addition to following the Cornerstone Charter Academy code of conduct, students are expected to follow the expectations listed below. Consequences for disrupting the learning environment will result in a verbal warning initially and then parental contact.

1. READY for class each day (in class on time with materials and homework due at the beginning of class)

2. RESPECTFUL of the instructor, classmates, and school property (professional attitude, cooperative, not disruptive, cell phones off and out of sight)

3. RESPONSIBLE in completing the work to the best of their ability (participate in class, be aware of due dates, be prepared for exams, take ownership of learning, do own work – cheating and plagiarism will not be accepted and will result in a zero grade)

HOMEWORK - Students will be expected to spend a between 1-3 hours each night doing homework in order to participate in class discussions and activities. The better a student is able to participate, the better equipped he or she will be for the assessment. There is SO MUCH content to cover, that the class will move at a quick pace. It is imperative that students keep up with their independent reading and note taking. Falling even one day behind will make it difficult to keep up. When this happens, students often get discouraged and see their grades plummet. For this reason, a quarterly schedule will be provided at the beginning of each quarter. Students will be instructed to glue this in their notebooks and refer to it throughout the quarter. Students may choose to work ahead of schedule if they know they have an upcoming sports or music event. They should always be mindful of what will be covered during class and come prepared to interact with the course content. On Friday, May 15, 2015 students will have the opportunity to earn three college credits by taking and performing well on the AP Human Geography (APHG) exam sponsored by College Board.

GRADING-Grades will come from the following: daily reading/note-taking assignments, computer-based inquiries, map activities and quizzes, case studies, digital & print media reflections, class discussions & participation, course content quizzes, AP Free Response Questions (FRQs), and AP-style tests.

Because this is a college level course, an understanding of the course content is crucial for academic success. Assessments will account for approximately half of the student’s grade. Only a limited number of assignments will be graded purely for effort. In order to receive a grade above a “C” in this course, students must demonstrate understanding of course content and excel in critical thinking. The course is a college level course and student work will be graded accordingly. The majority of students in this class can expect to receive a “B” or “C” grade.

Grades will be updated weekly and students should use the district’s website to regularly check on grades. Students should email the instructor if there is a discrepancy between the grade students received and the grade entered in progressbook. Teachers don’t intentionally input grades incorrectly, but do make mistakes occasionally. Students must advocate for themselves and be sure their grades are accurate. Class time will not be used to discuss individual grades. After school tutoring sessions will be provided Thursdays from 2:30-3:30, please consult the HW schedule. If you have a quick question, Miss Evans is available most days after school.

A limited number of extra credit opportunities will be available throughout the year. Students should neither depend on nor ask for individual extra credit, it will not be given on an individual basis.

LATE WORK -*AP Classes – NO late work accepted (including student absences), in accordance with CCA policy.

MISSED EXAMS-Students who are absent on a test day must make up the test on the day they return to class. If a student is absent for an extended period, an appointment for making- up the test will be made. Complete loss of credit for an exam may result if the exam is not completed in a timely fashion.

PLAGIARISM-and other forms of cheating will not be tolerated at all and will result in a zero grade. Students are expected to be honest regarding their work, manage their time, take responsibility and ownership of their learning, avoid procrastinating, and make use of electronic media and other resources to keep abreast of assignments and due dates.

ABSENCES - Because the course moves at a quick pace, it is very important that students not miss school. However, district policy allows students as many days absent plus an additional day to complete late work for excused absences only. Being that this is a college course, students should do their best to follow the schedule as much as possible and come to class ready to discuss the day’s content. Students will have their paper copy of the HW schedule for each quarter to consult. In addition, the schedule will be posted on the class website.

*Missed quizzes and tests must be made up as soon as possible (within a week’s time). Failure to make up assessments during the allotted time period will result in a zero grade. Students cannot wait till the last week of the quarter to make up all their missed assessments.

*Absences, should be limited to illness and emergencies. If you are an excused absence from class you will have the amount of days you are out, plus one to make up your missing assignments. Unexcused absences, are not required to be given make up work and will be given permission upon instructor approval. Regular attendance, participation in classroom discussions and critiques of student work. Diligent work on assignments is essential. To receive full credit, all assignments are due on time.

Course Outline:

UNIT 1: Geography: Its Nature and Perspectives (5-10% of the AP Exam)

• Readings: Rubenstein- Chapter 1

• Major assignments and assessments: Basic Geography Pre-Test, Cornell or outline notes from textbook reading, Vocabulary cards, class blogs, mapping lab (physical features, climate, vegetation), continent country quizzes, LDC assignment, “Building a New School” activity, Climate Graphs, Human Geography in Action (Kuby) case study #1: “True Maps, False Impressions”, Power of Place video, AP Free Response Questions, AP-style assessments

Content

A. Geography as a field of inquiry

B. Major geographical concepts underlying the geographical perspective: location, space, place, scale, pattern, nature and society, regionalization, globalization, and gender issues

C. Key geographical skills

1. How to use and think about maps and geospatial data

2. How to understand and interpret the implications of associations among phenomena in places

3. How to recognize and interpret at different scales the relationships among patterns and processes

4. How to define regions and evaluate the regionalization process

5. How to characterize and analyze changing interconnections among places

D. Use of geospatial technologies, such as GIS, remote sensing, global positioning systems (GPS), and online maps

E. Sources of geographical information and ideas: the field, census data, online data, aerial photography, and satellite imagery

F. Identification of major world regions

UNIT 2: Population and Migration (13-17% of the AP Exam)

• Readings: Rubenstein- Chapters 2 & 3

• Major assignments and assessments: Cornell or outline notes from textbook reading, Vocabulary cards, class blogs, mapping lab (population density), continent country quizzes, LDC assignment, “Census 2000” activity, Population Pyramids, Explain Demographic Transition Model including examples, Kuby case studies 5: “One Billion and Counting” & 4: “Newton’s First Law of Migration”, Power of Place videos, AP Free Response Questions, AP-style assessments

Content

A . Geographical analysis of population

1 . Density, distribution, and scale

2 . Implications of various densities and distributions

3 . Composition: age, sex, income, education, and ethnicity

4 . Patterns of fertility, mortality, and health

B . Population growth and decline over time and space

1 . Historical trends and projections for the future

2 . Theories of population growth and decline, including the Demographic

Transition Model

3 . Regional variations of demographic transition

4 . Effects of national population policies: promoting population growth in

some countries or reducing fertility rates in others

5 . Environmental impacts of population change on water use, food supplies,

biodiversity, the atmosphere, and climate

6 . Population and natural hazards: impacts on policy, economy, and society

C . Migration

1 . Types of migration: transnational, internal, chain, step, seasonal

agriculture (e .g ., transhumance), and rural to urban

2 . Major historical migrations

3 . Push and pull factors, and migration in relation to employment and

quality of life

4 . Refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons

5 . Consequences of migration: socioeconomic, cultural, environmental, and

political; immigration policies; remittances

UNIT 3: Cultural Patterns and Processes (13-17% of the AP Exam)

• Readings: Rubenstein- Chapters 4, 5, 6 & 7.1

• Major assignments and assessments: Cornell or outline notes from textbook reading, Vocabulary cards, class blogs, continent country quizzes, LDC assignment, Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s Genocide, Kuby case studies 2: “Layers of Tradition” and 3: “Tracking the AIDS Epidemic in the US”, Power of Place videos, AP Free Response Questions, AP-style assessments

Content

A. Concepts of culture

1. Culture traits

2. Diffusion patterns

3. Acculturation, assimilation, and multiculturalism

4. Cultural region, vernacular regions, and culture hearths

5. Globalization and the effects of technology on cultures

B. Cultural differences and regional patterns

1. Language and communications

2. Religion and sacred space

3. Ethnicity and nationalism

4. Cultural differences in attitudes toward gender

5. Popular and folk culture

6. Cultural conflicts, and law and policy to protect culture

C. Cultural landscapes and cultural identity

1. Symbolic landscapes and sense of place

2. The formation of identity and place making

3. Differences in cultural attitudes and practices toward the environment

4. Indigenous peoples

UNIT 4: Political Organization and Space (13-17% of the AP Exam)

• Readings:Rubenstein- Chapters 7.2-4 & 8

• Major assignments and assessments: Cornell or outline notes from textbook reading, Vocabulary cards, class blogs, continent country quizzes, LDC assignment, Kuby case studies 12: “Do Orange and Green Clash?” and 13: “Breaking up is Hard to Do”, Power of Place videos, AP Free Response Questions, AP-style assessments

Content

A. Territorial dimensions of politics

1. The concepts of political power and territoriality

2. The nature, meaning, and function of boundaries

3. Influences of boundaries on identity, interaction, and exchange

4. Federal and unitary states, confederations, centralized government, and forms of governance

5. Spatial relationships between political systems and patterns of ethnicity, economy, and gender

6. Political ecology: impacts of law and policy on the environment and environmental justice

B. Evolution of the contemporary political pattern

1. The nation-state concept

2. Colonialism and imperialism

3. Democratization

4. Fall of communism and legacy of the Cold War

5. Patterns of local, regional, and metropolitan governance

C. Changes and challenges to political-territorial arrangements

1. Changing nature of sovereignty

2. Fragmentation, unification, and cooperation

3. Supranationalism and international alliances

4. Devolution of countries: centripetal and centrifugal forces

5. Electoral geography: redistricting and gerrymandering

UNIT 5: Agriculture, Food Production, and Rural Land Use (13-17% of the AP Exam)

• Readings: Rubenstein- Chapter 10 (also, look back at chapter 12)

• Major assignments and assessments: Cornell or outline notes from textbook reading, Vocabulary cards, class blogs, continent country quizzes, LDC assignment, mapping crops in the US, Kuby case study 8: “Food for Thought”, Power of Place videos, AP Free Response Questions, AP-style assessments

Content

A. Development and diffusion of agriculture

1. Neolithic Agricultural Revolution

2. Second Agricultural Revolution

3. Green Revolution

4. Large-scale commercial agriculture and agribusiness

B. Major agricultural production regions

1. Agricultural systems associated with major bioclimatic zones

2. Variations within major zones and effects of markets

3. Interdependence among regions of food production and consumption

C. Rural land use and settlement patterns

1. Models of agricultural land use, including von Thünen’s model

2. Settlement patterns associated with major agriculture types: subsistence, cash cropping, plantation, mixed farming, monoculture, pastoralism, ranching, forestry, fishing and aquaculture

3. Land use/land cover change: irrigation, desertification, deforestation, wetland destruction, conservation efforts to protect or restore natural land cover, and global impacts

4. Roles of women in agricultural production and farming communities

D. Issues in contemporary commercial agriculture

1. Biotechnology, including genetically modified organisms (GMO)

2. Spatial organization of industrial agriculture, including the transition in land use to large-scale commercial farming and factors affecting the location of processing facilities

3. Environmental issues: soil degradation, overgrazing, river and aquifer depletion, animal wastes, and extensive fertilizer and pesticide use

4. Organic farming, crop rotation, value-added specialty foods, regional appellations, fair trade, and eat-local-food movements

5. Global food distribution, malnutrition, and famine

UNIT 6: Industrialization and Economic Development (13-17% of AP Exam)

• Readings: Rubenstein- Chapters 9, 11, 12, 14

• Major assignments and assessments: Cornell or outline notes from textbook reading, Vocabulary cards, class blogs, continent country quizzes, LDC assignment, calculate your ecological footprint, Kuby case studies 6: “Help Wanted”, 7: “Rags and Riches” and 14: “Preserving the Planet”, Power of Place videos, AP Free Response Questions, AP-style assessments

Content

A. Growth and diffusion of industrialization

1. The changing roles of energy and technology

2. Industrial Revolution

3. Models of economic development: Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth and Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory

4. Geographic critiques of models of industrial location: bid rent, Weber’s comparative costs of transportation and industrial location in relation to resources, location of retailing and service industries, and local economic development within competitive global systems of corporations and finance

B. Social and economic measures of development

1. Gross domestic product and GDP per capita

2. Human Development Index

3. Gender Inequality Index

4. Income disparity and the Gini coefficient

5. Changes in fertility and mortality

6. Access to health care, education, utilities, and sanitation

C. Contemporary patterns and impacts of industrialization and development

1. Spatial organization of the world economy

2. Variations in levels of development (uneven development)

3. Deindustrialization, economic restructuring, and the rise of service and high technology economies

4. Globalization, manufacturing in newly industrialized countries (NICs), and the international division of labor

5. Natural resource depletion, pollution, and climate change

6. Sustainable development

7. Government development initiatives: local, regional, and national policies

8. Women in development and gender equity in the workforce

UNIT 7: Cities and Urban Land Use (13-17% of AP Exam)

• Readings: Rubenstein Chapter 13 (also, look back at chapter 12)

• Major assignments and assessments: Cornell or outline notes from textbook reading, Vocabulary cards, class blogs, continent country quizzes, LDC assignment, Kuby case studies 9: “Take me out to the Ball Game”, 10: “Reading the Urban Landscape”, and 11” The Disappearing Front Range”, Power of Place videos, AP Free Response Questions, AP-style assessments

Content

A. Development and character of cities

1. Origin of cities; site and situation characteristics

2. Forces driving urbanization

3. Borchert’s epochs of urban transportation development

4. World cities and megacities

5. Suburbanization processes

B. Models of urban hierarchies: reasons for the distribution and size of cities

1. Gravity model

2. Christaller’s central place theory

3. Rank-size rule

4. Primate cities

C. Models of internal city structure and urban development: strengths and limitations of models

1. Burgess concentric zone model

2. Hoyt sector model

3. Harris and Ullman multiple nuclei model

4. Galactic city model

5. Models of cities in Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and South Asia

D. Built environment and social space

1. Types of residential buildings

2. Transportation and utility infrastructure

3. Political organization of urban areas

4. Urban planning and design (e .g ., gated communities, New Urbanism, and smart-growth policies)

5. Census data on urban ethnicity, gender, migration, and socioeconomic status

6. Characteristics and types of edge cities: boomburgs, greenfields, uptowns

E. Contemporary urban issues

1. Housing and insurance discrimination, and access to food stores

2. Changing demographic, employment, and social structures

3. Uneven development, zones of abandonment, disamenity, and gentrification

4. Suburban sprawl and urban sustainability problems: land and energy use, cost of expanding public education services, home financing and debt crises

5. Urban environmental issues: transportation, sanitation, air and water quality, remediation of brownfields, and farmland protection

AP Human Geography 2014-2015 Student and Parent Contract

DUE: FRIDAY, August 30, 2013

Student Agreement

I have read and understand the AP Human Geography Syllabus and will do my best to follow what is expected of me.

_____________________________ ___________________________ ___________

Printed Student’s Full name Student Signature Date

_______________________________________________________________________________

Student’s email address

(please print neatly)

Parent Agreement

I have read and understand the AP Human Geography Syllabus and will do my best to assist my child by: helping him/her to stay up with assignments, encouraging a positive attitude toward school and productive work ethic, and communicating with the instructor concerns that affect my child’s academic success.

Parents, by no means are you to do your child’s work. Feel free to guide and check work, but help your child take responsibility for his/her own learning. Having your child teach you is an excellent means of helping! It’s best to encourage independence, not foster dependence. Please address any concerns you have concerning your child on the back of this form. Please email me! It helps tremendously if I need to contact you. Please include your name, child’s name and period number. Thank you. I look forward to working with your child this year!

________________________________ ______________________________ __________

Printed Parent’s Full Name Parent Signature Date

__________________________________________________ __________________________

Parent’s email address Parent’s phone contact number

(please print neatly)

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download