AP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY Course Description Effective Fall 2015 AP Course Descriptions are updated regularly. Please visit AP Central® (apcentral.com) to determine whether a more recent Course Description PDF is available. AP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY Course Description Effective Fall 2015 The College Board New York, NY AP Human Geography Course Description, Effective Fall 2015 About the College Board The College Board is a mission-driven not-for-profit organization that connects students to college success and opportunity. Founded in 1900, the College Board was created to expand access to higher education.
Today, the membership association is made up of over 6,000 of the world’s leading educational institutions and is dedicated to promoting excellence and equity in education. Each year, the College Board helps more than seven million students prepare for a successful transition to college through programs and services in college readiness and college success — including the SAT® and the Advanced Placement Program®. The organization also serves the education community through research and advocacy on behalf of students, educators, and schools. For further information, visit www.
AP Equity and Access Policy ® The College Board strongly encourages educators to make equitable access a guiding principle for their AP® programs by giving all willing and academically prepared students the opportunity to participate in AP. We encourage the elimination of barriers that restrict access to AP for students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented. Schools should make every effort to ensure their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population. The College Board also believes that all students should have access to academically challenging course work before they enroll in AP classes, which can prepare them for AP success.
It is only through a commitment to equitable preparation and access that true equity and excellence can be achieved. AP Course Descriptions AP course descriptions are updated regularly. Please visit AP Central® (apcentral.org) to determine whether a more recent course description PDF is available. © 2015 The College Board.
College Board, Advanced Placement Program, AP, AP Central, and the acorn logo are registered trademarks of the College Board. All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners. Visit the College Board on the Web: www. 2 AP Human Geography Course Description, Effective Fall 2015 Contents 5 About AP® 6 Offering AP Courses and Enrolling Students 6 How AP Courses and Exams Are Developed 6 How AP Exams Are Scored 7 Using and Interpreting AP Scores 7 Additional Resources 8 Introduction to AP Human Geography 8 Overview of This Guide 8 Course Prerequisites 8 Reading Level of Course Texts 9 Expectations for Writing in the Course 10 AP Human Geography Course Overview 10 Course Content and Its Presentation 10 Course Goals 12 Course Design: Depth over Breadth 13 AP Course Audit and Curricular and Resource Requirements 15 Course Curriculum 15 General Learning Outcomes 15 Skills and Practices 15 World Regions Maps 17 Curriculum Topics 17 I.
Geography: Its Nature and Perspectives 17 II. Population and Migration 18 III. Cultural Patterns and Processes 18 IV. Political Organization of Space 19 V.
Agriculture, Food Production, and Rural Land Use 19 VI. Industrialization and Economic Development 20 VII. Cities and Urban Land Use © 2015 The College Board 3 AP Human Geography Course Description, Effective Fall 2015 22 AP Human Geography Curriculum Articulation 44 Course Instruction 44 Ways to Organize Instruction 45 Instructional Strategies 47 Reading for the Course 47 Characteristics of the Expected or Necessary Reading 48 Types of Texts Appropriate for the Course 48 Vocabulary 49 Helping Students with Difficult Reading 50 The Role of Technology in the Course 51 Writing in the Course 51 Expectations for Student Writing 52 Informal Writing 52 Research Papers 52 The Role of Argument 53 Multimodal Composition 53 Writing for Free-Response Items on the AP Human Geography Exam 55 Classroom Assessments 55 Formative and Summative Assessment 55 Feedback 57 Essential Resources 58 College Board Resources 59 The AP Human Geography Exam 60 Sample AP Human Geography Exam Items 60 Multiple-Choice Section 60 Sample Multiple-Choice Questions 66 Answers to Multiple-Choice Questions 67 Free-Response Section 67 Sample Free-Response Items 71 Summary of Scoring Rubrics © 2015 The College Board 4 AP Human Geography Course Description, Effective Fall 2015 About AP ® AP enables students to pursue college-level studies while still in high school. Through more than 30 courses, each culminating in a rigorous exam, AP provides willing and academically prepared students with the opportunity to earn college credit and/or advanced placement.
Taking AP courses also demonstrates to college admission officers that students have sought out the most rigorous course work available to them. Each AP course is modeled upon a comparable college course, and college and university faculty play a vital role in ensuring that AP courses align with college-level standards. Talented and dedicated AP teachers help AP students in classrooms around the world develop and apply the content knowledge and skills they will need later in college. Each AP course concludes with a college-level assessment developed and scored by college and university faculty and experienced AP teachers.
AP Exams are an essential part of the AP experience, enabling students to demonstrate their mastery of college-level course work. Most four-year colleges and universities in the United States and universities in more than 60 countries recognize AP in the admission process and grant students credit, placement, or both on the basis of successful AP Exam scores.org/apcreditpolicy to view AP credit and placement policies at more than 1,000 colleges and universities. Performing well on an AP Exam means more than just the successful completion of a course; it is a gateway to success in college. Research consistently shows that students who receive a score of 3 or higher on AP Exams typically experience greater academic success in college and have higher graduation rates than their non-AP peers.1 Additional AP studies are available at www.
1 See the following research studies for more details: Linda Hargrove, Donn Godin, and Barbara Dodd, College Outcomes Comparisons by AP and Non-AP High School Experiences (New York: The College Board, 2008). Chrys Dougherty, Lynn Mellor, and Shuling Jian, The Relationship Between Advanced Placement and College Graduation (Austin, Texas: National Center for Educational Accountability, 2006). © 2015 The College Board Return to the Table of Contents 5 AP Human Geography Course Description, Effective Fall 2015 Offering AP Courses and Enrolling Students This AP Course Description details the essential information required to understand the objectives and expectations of an AP course. The AP Program unequivocally supports the principle that each school implements its own curriculum that will enable students to develop the content knowledge and skills described here.
Schools wishing to offer AP courses must participate in the AP Course Audit, a process through which AP teachers’ syllabi are reviewed by college faculty. The AP Course Audit was created at the request of College Board members who sought a means for the College Board to provide teachers and administrators with clear guidelines on curricular and resource requirements for AP courses and to help colleges and universities validate courses marked “AP” on students’ transcripts. This process ensures that AP teachers’ syllabi meet or exceed the curricular and resource expectations that college and secondary school faculty have established for college-level courses. For more information on the AP Course Audit, visit www.
How AP Courses and Exams Are Developed Committees of college faculty and expert AP teachers design AP courses and exams to ensure that each AP subject reflects and assesses college-level expectations. AP Development Committees define the scope and expectations of the course, articulating what students should know and be able to do upon completion of the AP course. The AP Development Committees are also responsible for drawing clear and well-articulated connections between the AP course and AP Exam. The AP Exam development process is a multiyear endeavor; all AP Exams undergo extensive review, revision, piloting, and analysis to ensure that the questions are fair, of high quality, and reflect an appropriate range of difficulty.
How AP Exams Are Scored The exam scoring process, like the course and exam development process, relies on the expertise of both AP teachers and college faculty. While multiple-choice questions are scored by machine, the free-response questions are scored by thousands of college faculty and expert AP teachers at the annual AP Reading. AP Exam Readers are thoroughly trained, and their work is monitored throughout the Reading for fairness and consistency. In each subject, a highly respected college faculty member serves as Chief Reader, who, with the help of Readers in leadership positions, maintains the accuracy of the scoring standards.
Scores on the free- response questions are weighted and combined with the results of the computer- scored multiple-choice questions, and this raw score is converted into a composite AP score of 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1. © 2015 The College Board Return to the Table of Contents 6 AP Human Geography Course Description, Effective Fall 2015 The score-setting process is both precise and labor intensive, involving numerous psychometric analyses of the results of a specific AP Exam in a specific year and of the particular group of students who took that exam. Additionally, to ensure alignment with college-level standards, part of the score-setting process involves comparing the performance of AP students with the performance of students enrolled in comparable courses in colleges throughout the United States. In general, the AP composite score points are set so that the lowest raw score needed to earn an AP score of 5 is equivalent to the average score among college students earning grades of A in the college course.
Similarly, AP Exam scores of 4 are equivalent to college grades of A-, B+, and B. AP Exam scores of 3 are equivalent to college grades of B-, C+, and C. Using and Interpreting AP Scores College faculty are involved in every aspect of AP, from course and exam development to scoring and standards alignment. These faculty members ensure that the courses and exams meet colleges’ expectations for content taught in comparable college courses.
Based upon outcomes research and program evaluation, the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Advanced Placement Program recommend that colleges grant credit and/or placement to students with AP Exam scores of 3 and higher. The AP score of 3 is equivalent to grades of B-, C+, and C in the equivalent college course. However, colleges and universities set their own AP credit, advanced standing, and course placement policies based on their unique needs and objectives. AP Score Recommendation 5 Extremely well qualified 4 Well qualified 3 Qualified 2 Possibly qualified 1 No recommendation Additional Resources Visit http://apcentral.org for more information about the AP Program.
© 2015 The College Board Return to the Table of Contents 7 AP Human Geography Course Description, Effective Fall 2015 Introduction to AP Human Geography The AP Human Geography course introduces students to the systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface. Students learn to employ spatial concepts and landscape analysis to examine human socioeconomic organization and its environmental consequences. They also learn about the methods and tools geographers use in their research and applications. Overview of This Guide This publication is intended to give school administrators and AP Human Geography teachers a detailed summary of the curricular requirements for the course, as well as a summary of the performance expectations for students in the course.
It also provides guidance about strategies for effective instruction and formative assessment — both crucial elements in engaging high school learners in a college-level curriculum.