AP Human Geography Flashcards

AP Human Geography Course and Exam Description

Course Overview

  • AP Human Geography introduces students to the systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface.
  • Students employ spatial concepts and landscape analysis to examine socioeconomic organization and its environmental consequences.
  • The curriculum reflects the goals of the National Geography Standards (2012).
  • Equivalent to an introductory college-level course in human geography.

College Board

  • Mission-driven, not-for-profit organization connecting students to college success and opportunity.
  • Founded in 1900 to expand access to higher education.
  • Membership association of over 6,000 leading educational institutions.
  • Helps more than seven million students prepare for college through programs like SAT® and Advanced Placement® Program.
  • Advocates for students, educators, and schools through research.

AP Equity and Access Policy

  • College Board encourages educators to make equitable access a guiding principle for their AP programs.
  • Aims to eliminate barriers restricting access to AP for underrepresented ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups.
  • Schools should ensure AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population.
  • All students should have access to academically challenging coursework before enrolling in AP classes.

Course Framework Components

  • Course Skills: Central to the study and practice of human geography; students should develop and apply these regularly.
  • Course Content: Organized into commonly taught units, providing a suggested sequence. Includes required content and conceptual understandings.
  • Grounded in big ideas that are cross-cutting concepts throughout the course.

Big Ideas

  • Patterns and Spatial Organization (PSO): Spatial patterns and organization of human society are arranged according to political, historical, cultural, and economic factors.
  • Impacts and Interactions (IMP): Complex relationships of cause and effect exist among people, their environments, and historical and contemporary actions.
  • Spatial Processes and Societal Change (SPS): A spatial perspective allows for a focus on the ways phenomena are related to one another in particular places, which in turn allows for the examination of human organization and its environmental consequences.

Units

  • Unit 1: Thinking Geographically (8–10% of AP Exam)
  • Unit 2: Population and Migration Patterns and Processes (12–17%)
  • Unit 3: Cultural Patterns and Processes (12–17%)
  • Unit 4: Political Patterns and Processes (12–17%)
  • Unit 5: Agriculture and Rural Land-Use Patterns and Processes (12–17%)
  • Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes (12–17%)
  • Unit 7: Industrial and Economic Development Patterns and Processes (12–17%)

Required Course Content Labeling System

  • Big Idea: PSO (Patterns and Spatial Organization)
  • Enduring Understanding: PSO-1 Geographers analyze relationships among and between places to reveal important spatial patterns.
  • Learning Objective: PSO-1.B Explain how major geographic concepts illustrate spatial relationships.
  • Essential Knowledge: PSO-1.B.2 Theories regarding the interaction of the natural environment with human societies have evolved from environmental determinism to possibilism.

Unit 1: Thinking Geographically

  • Focuses on how geographers approach the study of places.
  • Students reflect on the "why of where" to understand geographic perspectives. Topics include:
    • Introduction to Maps
    • Geographic Data
    • The Power of Geographic Data
    • Spatial Concepts
    • Human–Environmental Interaction
    • Scales of Analysis
    • Regional Analysis

Unit 2: Population and Migration Patterns and Processes

  • Addresses patterns associated with human populations.
  • Examines population distributions at different scales.
  • Population pyramids demonstrate age-sex structures.
  • Factors influencing population changes and their effects on economy, culture, and politics.
  • Study of migration patterns and their impact on existing settlements.

Unit 3: Cultural Patterns and Processes

  • Focus on cultural patterns and processes that create cultural identities.
  • Considers the effects of geographical location and resources on cultural practices.
  • Analyzes cultural landscapes and how they change over time.
  • Focuses on the distribution of cultural practices and the causes and effects of their diffusion.

Unit 4: Political Patterns and Processes

  • Addresses the political organization of the world.
  • Examines the contemporary political map and the impact of territoriality on political power and identity.
  • Looks at different types of political boundaries, their function, and scale.
  • Examines forms of government and how devolution may alter the functioning of political units.
  • Influence of supranational organizations and their role in global affairs.

Unit 5: Agriculture and Rural Land-Use Patterns and Processes

  • Examines the origins of agriculture and its diffusion.
  • Agricultural practices have changed due to technological innovations.
  • Consequences of agricultural practices such as the use of high-yield seeds and chemicals.
  • Differences in food/resources production and location.
  • Global system of agriculture and the interdependence of regions.

Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes

  • Addresses the origins and influences of urban settlements.
  • Explores cities across the world and their role in globalization.
  • Examines the spatial distribution of cities, comparing them across regions.
  • Identifies patterns of development and their economic/political influences.
  • Challenges of urban places, including density, infrastructure, and mobility.
  • Sustainability through new approaches to growth.

Unit 7: Industrial and Economic Development Patterns and Processes

  • Addresses the origins and influences of industrial development
  • Industrialization plays a vital role in economic development and globalization.
  • Rostow's Stages of Economic Development: Measures of social and economic development and used to explains the spatial variations in development
  • Spatial patterns of industrialization and geography of uneven development.
  • Strategies for sustainable development focused on economics, people, and environmental protection.

AP Classroom

  • Online platform designed to support teachers and students.
  • Provides resources and tools for yearlong support.
  • Includes Unit Guides, Personal Progress Checks, and AP Question Bank.

Personal Progress Checks

  • Formative AP questions for every unit.
  • Provide feedback to students on areas where they need to focus.
  • Measure knowledge and skills through multiple-choice and free-response questions.

AP Question Bank

  • Online library of real AP Exam questions.
  • Teachers can find questions indexed by course topics and skills.
  • Enables students to practice and get feedback on each question.

Digital Activation

  • Teachers must complete the digital activation process.
  • Gives students and teachers access to resources and gathers students’ exam registration information online.
  • Streamlines exam ordering and provides targeted Instructional Planning Reports.

Instructional Model

  • Integrate AP resources throughout the course.
  • Plan: Review unit guides, use the Unit at a Glance table, and identify useful strategies.
  • Teach: Use topic pages, integrate content with skills, and employ instructional strategies.
  • Assess: Use AP Classroom to assign Personal Progress Checks and create additional practice opportunities.

AP Course Audit

  • Schools wishing to offer AP courses must participate in the AP Course Audit.
  • Ensures AP teachers’ courses meet or exceed curricular and resource expectations.

AP Exams

  • Criterion-referenced, not norm-referenced.
  • Every student who meets the criteria for an AP score of 2, 3, 4, or 5 will receive that score, no matter how many students that is.
  • Developed and scored by college faculty and experienced AP teachers.
  • Multiple-choice questions are scored by machine.
    Free-response questions, are scored by thousands of college faculty and expert AP teachers.
  • AP Exams are not norm-referenced or graded on a curve.
  • They are criterion-referenced.

AP Score Credit Recommendation and College Grade Equivalent

  • 5: Extremely well qualified, College Grade Equivalent A
  • 4: Well qualified, College Grade Equivalent A−, B+, B
  • 3: Qualified, College Grade Equivalent B−, C+, C
  • 2: Possibly qualified, College Grade Equivalent n/a
  • 1: No recommendation, College Grade Equivalent n/a

Becoming an AP Reader

  • Opportunities to bring positive changes to the classroom, gain in-depth understanding of AP Exam and AP scoring standards, receive compensation, score from home, and earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

Instructional Strategies

  • Create Representations: Students create tables, graphs, or other infographics to interpret text or data.
  • Critique Reasoning: Through collaborative discussion, students critique the arguments of others.
    *Close Reading: Reading, rereading, and analyzing small chunks of text to comprehensive understanding
    *Debate: Present a position using evidence and reason to back up claim
  • Debriefing: Teachers facilitate a discussion that leads to consensus understanding.
  • Discussion Group: Students engage in an interactive small-group discussion.
  • Fishbowl: Discussing topics within groups; some students form an inner circle and discuss techniques, while an outer circle listens, responds, and evaluates.
  • Graphic Organizer: Representing ideas and information visually (e.g., Venn diagrams, flowcharts, cluster maps).
  • Guided Discussion: Umbrella strategy allowing a teacher to use different techniques & strategies to bring different techniques with the use of strategies
  • Jigsaw: Each student in a group becomes an expert based on what they read, and shares it with the class.
  • Look for a Pattern: Students evaluate data or create visual representations to find a trend.
  • Making Connections: Connect two terms for a new understanding based on existing knowledge
  • Self/Peer Review: Critique your own/ another's writing for a deeper understanding.
  • Quickwrite: Quick writing prompt
  • Shared Inquiry:Read a text, interoperate, using evidence to back up claim, through groups/discussion

Exam Overview

  • The AP Human Geography Exam assesses student understanding of the skills and learning objectives outlined in the course framework.
  • The exam is 2 hours and 15 minutes long and includes 60 multiple-choice questions and 3 free-response questions.
    *Multiple choice: 60 questions, 60 minutes
    *Free Response: 3 question, 75 minutes