Syllabus For
Advanced Placement Human Geography
Teacher: Mrs. Amanda Crutchman
Location: Room 200
School telephone: 843-237-9899, ext 2200
School email: acrutchman@gcsd.k12.sc.us
Course Overview
Advanced Placement Human Geography is an introductory college course in human geography. The course is
structured according to the course outline found in the most recent AP Human Geography Course Description
published by the College Board. There are seven units of study: geography, population, cultural patterns,
political organization of space, agriculture, industrialization, and urban land use. This purpose of this course is
to introduce a systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped human’s understanding, use, and
alteration of Earth’s surface. We will look spatially at the Earth to analyze human’s organization of space and
the environmental consequences of their decisions. We will be looking for patterns across the cultural
landscape, trying to identify trends, and anticipate future phenomena. We will also explore different methods
and tools geographers use in their science and practice.
Textbook
Rubenstein, James M. The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography. 7th ed. Upper Saddle
River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002.
I will use additional text books, publications, and scholarly articles to prepare my lectures, as well as current
articles from respected periodicals and online sources to supplement the students’ sense of contemporary
geographical issues.
Additional Text Resources
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: Norton, 1999.
Fellmann, Jerome Donald, Mark D. Bjelland, Arthur Getis, and Judith Getis. Human Geography: Landscapes of
Human Activities. 11th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
Fouberg, Erin, Alexander Murphy and H.J. deBlij. Human Geography: People, Place and Culture. 11th ed. New
York: Wiley, 2015.
Geiner, Allison. Visualizing Human Geography. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 2014.
Kuby, Michael, John Harner, Patricia Gober. Human Geography In Action. 6th ed. New York: Wiley, 2012.
Online Resources
Students will be assigned weekly readings and/or videos from online media sources such as CNN (students will
watch the CNN Student News daily), BBC, the New York Times, the Economist, Genocide Watch.org,
Amnesty International, the Smithsonian, PBS, and other reputable and respected online sources, to understand
the implications of in class topics with current events.
Students Will Need:
A three ring binder.
Lined paper.
A flash drive.
Colored pencils/highlighters.
A personal copy of ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ – will not need until Spring Semester.
3 x 5 Index Cards (about 200 over the course of the year).
Access to the Internet for online assignments.
*Not having access at home is not an excuse. Make arrangements to use the media center.
Course Planner
As an understanding of basic physical geography is required to excel in this course, all students will
complete a summer pre-unit in which they will become familiar with the regions of the Earth and
their respective political boundaries and physical characteristics. This unit is due by Friday, August
21 or 5 points will be deducted each day that it is late.
Topic
I. Geography: Its
Nature and
Perspectives
MultipleChoice
Coverage on
the AP Exam
5-10%
Readings
Rubenstein,
Ch. 1
Additional
Assigned
Articles.
Time
3 weeks
Unit Objectives
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II. Population
13-17%
Rubenstein Ch.
2-3
Additional
Assigned
Articles
5 weeks
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Explain differences between early maps
and contemporary maps.
Describe the role of map scale and
projections and making maps.
Explain how latitude and longitude are
used to locate points on Earth’s surface.
Identify contemporary and analytic tools,
including remote sensing, GPS, and GIS.
Identify geographic characteristics of
places, including toponym, site, and
situation.
Identify the three types of regions.
Describe two geographic definitions of
culture.
Identify the three properties of distribution
across space.
Describe how characteristics can spread
across space over time through diffusion.
Describe regions where population is
clustered and where it is sparse.
Define three types of density used in
population geography.
Understand how to measure population
growth through the nature increase rate.
Describe the four stages of the
demographic transition
Summarize the four stages of the
epidemiologic transition.
Understand reasons for variations in health
care.
Describe the difference between
international and internal migration.
Identify the principal sources of
immigrants during the three main eras of
U.S. migration.
Explain differences among the three forms
of intraregional migration.
Provide examples of political,
environmental, and economic push and
pull factors.
Describe characteristics of immigrants to
the United States.
Compare American and European attitudes
toward immigrants.
III. Cultural
Patterns and
Processes
13-17%
Rubenstein Ch.
4-7
Additional
Assigned
Articles
9 weeks
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Semester Exam
IV. Political
Organization of
space
Units I-III
13-17%
Rubenstein Ch.
8
Additional
Assigned
Articles
December
2 weeks
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Compare the origin, diffusion, and
distribution of folk and popular culture.
Compare reasons for distribution of
clothing styles and folk and popular
culture.
Describe regional variations in popular
food preferences.
Understand factors that influence patterns
of folk housing.
Compare the diffusion of the Internet and
social media with the diffusion of TV.
Name the largest language families.
Describe the main dialects in the United
States.
Understand the concept of a lingua franca.
Understand how English has diffused to
other languages.
Understand the role of Spanish and French
and North America.
Describe the distribution of the major
religions.
Describe the distribution of the largest
ethnic religions.
Understand reasons for religious conflicts
arising from government policies.
Analyze reasons for religious conflicts in
the Middle East.
Identify and describe the major ethnicities
in the United States.
Describe the patterns of forced voluntary
migration of African Americans, Hispanic
Americans, and Asian Americans to the
United States.
Describe the patterns of migration of
African Americans within the United
States.
Explain the difference between ethnicity
and nationality.
Describe the process of ethnic cleansing.
Explain why it is difficult to determine if
some territories are states.
Explain the concept of a nation-state and
how it differs from earlier ways to govern.
Understand the difference between a
nation-state and a multinational state.
Describe the types of physical boundaries
between states.
Describe the types of cultural boundaries
between states.
Describe fives shapes of states.
Describe differences among the three
regime types.
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V. Agricultural
13-17%
Rubenstein Ch.
10 (Key Issue
3)
Diamond,
selected
articles.
Additional
Assigned
Articles
3 weeks
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VI.
Industrialization
and Economic
Development
13-17%
Rubenstein Ch.
9, 11, 12 (Key
Issues 1 and 2)
Additional
Assigned
Articles
5 weeks
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Explain the concept of gerrymandering and
three ways that it is done.
Describe the principal alliances in Europe
during the Cold War era.
Describe the principal economic alliances
in Europe in the period since World War
II.
Explain the concept of terrorism.
Identify the major crop and livestock
hearths.
Describe the major differences between
subsistence and commercial agriculture.
Explain differences between developed
and developing countries in food
consumption.
Explain the global distribution of
undernourishment.
Identify the 11 major agricultural regions.
Explain how intensive subsistence farming
works in the high population
concentrations of developing regions.
Describe reasons for growing crops other
than wet rice in intensive subsistence
regions.
Describe the impact of population growth
and trade on farming in developing
countries.
Understand distinctive challenges for
developing countries to increase food
supply.
Explain the impact of overproduction and
market access on farming in developed
countries.
Explain the contribution of expanding
exports and farmland to world food supply.
Describe the contribution of higher
productivity to world food supply.
Describe variations in level of
development within countries and regions.
Explain the principal sources of demand
for fossil fuels.
Describe the distribution of production of
the three fossil fuels.
Analyze the distribution of reserves of
fossil fuels and differentiate between
proven and potential resources.
Identify challenges to increasing the use of
alternate energy sources.
Summarize the two paths to development.
Describe shortcomings of the two
development paths and reasons
international trade has triumphed.
Explain the main sources of financing
development.
Explain problems with financing
VII. Cities and
Urban Land Use
13-17%
Rubenstein Ch.
12-13, 14
Additional
Assigned
Articles
5 weeks
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Exam Review
AP Human
Geography Exam
development in developing and developed
countries.
Describe the three types of services and
changing numbers of types of jobs.
Explain the concepts of market area, range,
and threshold.
Explain the distribution of different-sized
settlements.
Describe the factors that are used to
identify global cities.
Explain the two types of business services
in developing countries.
Explain the concept of economic base.
Describe the difference between clustered
and dispersed rural settlements.
Identify important prehistoric, ancient, and
medieval urban settlements.
Explain the two dimensions of
urbanization.
Explain the three-dimensional nature of a
CBD.
Describe the concentric zone, sector, and
multiple nuclei models.
Describe the history of development of
cities in developing countries.
State three definitions of urban settlements.
Describe how metropolitan areas contain
many local governments and overlap with
each other.
2 weeks
5/13/2016
Typical Units
Even though the College Board identifies seven topics of study, due to the varying numbers of chapters contained, some
units of study may contain between one and four chapters in the text. The typical unit of study in our AP Human
Geography course will consist of reading the assigned Chapter in the Rubenstein book, which will be assessed by
a reading quiz. Students will be also be quizzed on vocabulary, which they will prepare for by creating their own
3 x 5 study cards. In addition, they will read online articles that are selected for their specific relevance to the unit,
and watch several short videos and reflect upon them in class. Each unit will have an ancillary activity, and each
unit will culminate in the submission of their 3x5 study cards and a chapter test that will include both multiple
choice and free response items.
Teaching Strategies
The opening of each course will consist of a 10 minute viewing of CNN Student News. Students will view the program
and answer questions, particularly those in reference to the course. We will then proceed with the class which will
either consist of a 35 lecture/discussion guided by a visually and media-enhance PowerPoint, or students will
work on their own in on various assignments. A variety of strategies, such as Socratic Seminary, pair-sharing,
fishbowl, and flipped classroom methods will be applied throughout various units.
Student Assessment and Course Grading
Course grading will be as follows:
Assessment Type
Tests/Projects
Quizzes
Other Assessments
Assessment Weight
55%
25%
20%
Grade
93-100%
85-92%
77-84%
70-76
0-69
-A
-B
-C
-D
-F
All Students are advised that an AP weight only appears on the FINAL grade on the transcript.
All Students are advised that while the AP EXAM is not included in the grade for the course, all students MUST
attend and take the AP Human Geography Exam on Friday, May 13, 2016. If they do not then they will be
assigned a 62% for the final quarter REGARDLESS of current grade