This course can help prepare students who wish to continue their science education after high school, as well as students who wish to perform exceptionally well on the Math portion of the SAT exam. The level of aptitude in this subject will assist students wishing to excel on the SAT and in college courses.
According to the College Board’s website, Advanced Placement Human Geography focuses primarily on introducing students to the systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface. Students will employ spatial concepts and landscape analysis to examine human social organization and its environmental consequences. They will also learn about the methods and tools geographers use in their science and practice. This course will be particularly useful to those student who wish to go into a scientific career, but it may also be helpful to those students who simply wish to get college credit for their major.
This college-level course 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 analyze human social organization and its environmental consequences. They also learn about the methods and tools geographers use in their science and practice.
While there is no official prerequisite for Advanced Placement Human Geography, students should have a firm understanding of basic geography terms and definitions before entering the class. AP Human Geography is a serious course and includes many course goals. According to the College Board’s website, by the time students take their AP Human Geography exam they should be prepared to do the following:
- Use and think about maps and spatial data. Geography is concerned with the ways Earth’s surface reflects and influences the human condition. Maps and spatial data are fundamental to understanding geography as a whole. They are also critical to analyzing geographical information and history.
- Understand and interpret the implications of associations among phenomena in different places. Student should learn to not only recognize and interpret patterns, but to assess the significance of the relationships among phenomena that occur in similar places. They should also be aware of how political relationships and cultural landscapes can be affected by these phenomena.
- Recognize and interpret at different scales the relationships among patterns and processes. All geography requires a sensitivity to space and scale as well as to the framework of how events and processes influence one another. Students should be able to analyze processes at different scales and seek explanations of geographic patterns as well.
- Define regions and evaluate the regionalization process. Students will become familiar with how to describe patterns and how they came about in the first place. Student will move beyond learning how to locate different places, but learn how to analyze their location and tell how that place most likely came to be.
- Characterize and analyze changing interconnections among places. Students will learn how processes and phenomena in one place can affect the processes and phenomena in another place. They will become aware of these relationships’ constantly changing nature and understand how and why these changes occur in the first place.
Students will also learn how to use study notes and other study techniques in conjunction with Geography textbooks such as The Cultural Landscape, Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activity, and Places and Regions in Global Context: Human Geography.
Students interested in enrolling in AP Human Geography should remember that taking a college level course will require more time and energy than other high school courses. Failing to commit to these courses can result in a student’s GPA taking a beating, so it’s important that students set aside extra time for these classes. Students who do dedicate themselves to these classes will see a large payoff in their GPA and in their preparedness for college level courses.
Students who wish to get into the college or university of their choice should take a serious look at Advanced Placement courses. Not only do AP courses set students apart on their high school transcripts, they can also prepare them for what will be expected of them once they’re in a college environment. Most importantly, AP courses will assist students in developing discipline and time management skills. Anyone interested in enrolling in AP courses should visit their high school counselor for more information about how to enroll and what will be expected of them. The more students focus on excelling earlier on in their education, the bigger their reward will be in the end!
Here you find AP Human Geography outlines and notes. We are working on adding more AP Human Geography resources like practice quizzes, free response questions, study guides, and vocabulary terms.
