This is the page where you will find all that we are doing in the course of Advanced Placement Human Geography:
Unit 1: Geography- It's Nature and Perspectives (Completed)
Summary of Unit: Students will learn about the basics of Human Geography. The Hook will start with one question: What is Human Geography? Students will make their best guesses and support their arguments without using resources. Then, we will talk about the concept of the "Why of Where?" I will have students make a list of things that have ever made them think "Why there?" We will also explore the concept of "Why care?" Students will get a heightened interest for Human Geography and I hope this raises more questions so we can go back and forth about the various aspects of Human Geography. This unit will lay the ground-work for all the other units to follow. Students will understand the basic concepts of Human Geography and begin to look at the world from a Geographer's perspective (and understand what that means and how to do it).
Essential Questions: 1) What is Human Geography? 2) What is the "why of where?" 3) How can you interpret different places' patterns? 4) Why do time-zones exist?
Objectives: 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 worl regions.
Required Activities: A) Rubenstein, Chapter 1: "Basic Concepts" B) "The Five Themes of Geography" C) "Key Geographical Skills" D) Article Reviews: 1) "Rediscovering the Importance of Geography" 2) "Axioms for Reading the Landscape" 3) "The Four Traditions of Geography" E) Media Projects Power of Place #1 (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)
Unit 2: Population and Migration
Summary of Unit: This unit, students will learn about the population and migration patterns across the world. The "hook" will be to talk about why some countries are heavily populated and others are not. We will come up with multiple hypotheses to see what students understand about population. We will also show various maps of different migration patterns and I will have students guess when the migration occurred and what people are migrating. This will start conversations about population and migration in a more natural way. This unit we will study population and health. Students will learn that more people are alive at this time than at any other point in Earth's long history. The world's population is growing steadily and we're already reaching 7 billion people. We will also look at the diversity of the population problems throughout the world. Some countries are struggling to have population growth at all, while others are growing at a rate that they can no longer sustain.
Essential Questions: 1) Where is the world's population distributed? 2) Why is global population increasing? 3) Why does population growth vary among regions? 4) Why do some regions face health threats? Where are migrants distributed? 5) Where do people migrate within a country? 6) Why do people migrate? 7) Why do migrants face obstacles?
Objectives: 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 (DTM) 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 (Population Movement) 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