AP Human Geography Summer Assignments
The following are the summer assignments for AP Human Geography. There are two
reading assignments you will be responsible for over the summer.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is a great book! The
book revolves around America’s fast food culture and its impact on our lives. Who
would have thought that McDonald’s could impact your education? The connection to
our lives is greater than you probably realize. You are also going write a paper analyzing
the book and its relationship to Human Geography.
Finally, you will be responsible for reading textbook pages, answering questions, and
defining vocabulary. It is recommended that you take notes on the first chapter of the
text as you will be responsible for this information on your first quiz and test. If you have
questions over the summer you can contact me via email
(mhaupert@braintreema.gov), which I will be checking periodically.
Before starting the summer assignment you MUST sign on to Moodle. All work
done throughout the year can be accessed through the AP Human Geography
Moodle page. When signing up make sure to use an email which you check.
Announcements to the class will be done through Moodle.
Step 1: Go to http://www.bpsmoodle.org/moodle/
Step 2: Click on the Social Studies link and find the AP Human Geography page
Step 3: Sign up. It requires you to login with the same username and password as your
BHS student account except the password includes "*1a" at the end.
ALL SUMMER ASSIGNMENTS ARE DUE THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. IF
CLASS IS MISSED DUE TO AN ASSEMBLY, PAPERS MUST BE PASSED IN
TO ME BY 2:15. NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED.
1) Summer reading assignment: Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side
of the All-American Meal, HarperCollins, 2002.
2) Paper on Fast Food Nation.
3) De Blij, H. J., and Alexander B. Murphy. Human Geography: Culture, Society,
and Space. 10th ed. New York: John Wiley, 2012. Read pp. 1-34 and define all
“Key Terms” at the end of the chapter. Answer the following questions in a
typed response.
a. Use Google Earth to find a place where you have never been, but feel as
though you know about. Use Google Earth to study the physical and
human geography overlaid on this place. You can select to highlight
different layers of data by checking boxes in the menu on the left. How
does studying this place on Google Earth change your mental map and/or
your understanding of the place?
b. Once you think about different types of diffusion, you might be tempted to
figure out what kinds of diffusion are taking place for all sorts of goods,
ideas, or diseases. Please remember that any good, idea, or disease can
diffuse in more than one way. Choose a good, idea, or disease as an
example and describe how it diffused from its hearth across the globe,
referring to at least three different types of diffusion.
c. Think about something that is of personal interest to you (music, literature,
politics, science, sports, ect.), and consider how whatever you have chosen
could be studied from a geographic perspective. Write a geographic
question that could be the foundation of a geographic study of the item
you have chosen. Think about space and location, landscape, and place.
Describe how some of the geographic concepts you learned about in
chapter 1 could help analyze and study the item you chose.
AP Human Geography Summer Assignment Paper
Your summer assignment is to read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the AllAmerican Meal, HarperCollins, 2002. Your papers should be no more than 4 pages,
MAXIMUM. The point of this assignment is to see how well you can synthesize the information
from the book. You need to make EVERY word count, no fluff. Use the following rubric as an
organizational guide:
Guidelines and Rubric
I. Analysis
_____/20 points: Author's objectives. What did the author intend for the reader in writing this
book?
Approximately ½ page in length.
_____/20 points: Universal lessons. Provide examples from the book of lessons that would apply
to any place or time. These lessons should deal, if possible, with the distinctive features of human
existence and the experiences the majority of us share, for example, “everything in moderation.”
If you do not feel there is any lesson to be learned from the book, explain why.
Approximately 1 ½ pages in length.
II. Themes of Geography
_____/50 points: Please identify and define the five themes of geography (location, movement,
place, human and environment interaction, and region). Then support each theme with specific
examples from Fast Food Nation. If you are unsure of the definitions of these concepts, you will
find them in your textbook or in a Google search related to the "five themes of geography."
Approximately 2 pages in length.
_____/10 points: Use of passages to support answer. Proper citation is required.
III. Overall Paper
Spelling and grammar are expected to reflex AP caliber work. Points can be deducted for poorly
written and proofread papers.
Total: ______/100 points