Welcome to AP Human Geography
AP Exam Prep is here
All units follow AP's topic outline - see the top of each page for a summary page of each unit and how it aligns to AP Curriculum goals. Additionally, in each unit's summary page, I am breaking the material into four components: Foundations, Application, and Context. Below you can learn more about this organizational approach in my curriculum.
|
Foundations
The Foundations section of each unit identifies the fundamental vocabulary, concepts, and relevant models. Additionally, certain aspects of physical geography may be introduced here. It is critical to your success in this course for you to become fluent in the vocabulary of human geography. The course vocabulary is your foundation, or your 'skeleton,' of geographic knowledge.
In order to apply the vocabulary concepts to real-world situations, you must create a strong foundation and this is made much easier by employing the new vocabulary into your own lexicon whether speaking or writing. By using the vocabulary you engage the concepts and when it comes time for the AP Exam or other tests, even in other classes, you will be able to express yourself with precision and clarity.
Schema is a cognitive framework or 'mental construction set' that helps organize and interpret information. Schema can serve as host to new information. Schemas can be useful because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount of information that is available in our environment. However, these mental frameworks also cause us to exclude pertinent information and to instead focus only on things that confirm or validate our pre-existing beliefs and ideas. Being intellectually lazy with your schemas can contribute to stereotypes and make it difficult to retain new information that does not conform to our established ideas about the world. You will benefit more from a course like AP Human Geography by keeping an open mind and building a flexible schema, or skeleton, onto which you can add new information.
In order to apply the vocabulary concepts to real-world situations, you must create a strong foundation and this is made much easier by employing the new vocabulary into your own lexicon whether speaking or writing. By using the vocabulary you engage the concepts and when it comes time for the AP Exam or other tests, even in other classes, you will be able to express yourself with precision and clarity.
Schema is a cognitive framework or 'mental construction set' that helps organize and interpret information. Schema can serve as host to new information. Schemas can be useful because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount of information that is available in our environment. However, these mental frameworks also cause us to exclude pertinent information and to instead focus only on things that confirm or validate our pre-existing beliefs and ideas. Being intellectually lazy with your schemas can contribute to stereotypes and make it difficult to retain new information that does not conform to our established ideas about the world. You will benefit more from a course like AP Human Geography by keeping an open mind and building a flexible schema, or skeleton, onto which you can add new information.
Application
Here you will find various primary and secondary sources such as journal articles, essays, and editorials that relate to the Foundation sections' vocabulary and main topics. If the Foundations section can be seen as a skeleton, then the Applications section 'fleshes out' the skeleton by adding the form and substance of academic perspective through the use of primary and secondary sources. Understanding seminal works of geography in their temporal or chronological context can be challenging, but, by integrating a variety of perspectives students can better develop a healthy understanding of the course and the world around them.
Context
Human geography is an intellectually inclusive field of study, allowing us to refine our geographic perspectives by including other fields of study such as history, environmental science, psychology, economics, etc.. We will look at the media and its coverage of current events, but also underrepresented but fundamentally important current events stories of regional importance if not global. Some of these stories and examples may include mentally or emotionally challenging content, but it is my firm belief that through courses like human geography all students can be best served by encountering the world as it truly is, and not through misrepresentations.
If Foundations was the 'skeleton' or schema, and Applications 'fleshed out' the understanding of core concepts, then the Context section is the Spiritus Vitae, or the Breath of Life, thus creating a 'living', complex and dynamic perspective, backed by an understanding derived from multiple academic fields of study. I hope this course can provoke your mind into increased engagement with new ideas, to introduce you to different cultures, to present conformity and divergences, to encourage the pursuit of knowledge through the stimulation of curiosity, and in more concrete terms, to fully arm you with a variety of examples and real-world applications so that you are fully prepared for the AP Human Geography Exam.
If Foundations was the 'skeleton' or schema, and Applications 'fleshed out' the understanding of core concepts, then the Context section is the Spiritus Vitae, or the Breath of Life, thus creating a 'living', complex and dynamic perspective, backed by an understanding derived from multiple academic fields of study. I hope this course can provoke your mind into increased engagement with new ideas, to introduce you to different cultures, to present conformity and divergences, to encourage the pursuit of knowledge through the stimulation of curiosity, and in more concrete terms, to fully arm you with a variety of examples and real-world applications so that you are fully prepared for the AP Human Geography Exam.
Examples
Examples can help bring all other components together, especially as we all learn differently. I welcome student input, feedback and hope students can find examples to include for the students of future classes.