World Geography

The focus of this course is the study of the world’s peoples, places, and environments, with an emphasis on world regions. The knowledge, skills, and perspectives of the course are centered on the world’s population and cultural characteristics, landforms and climates, economic development, and migration and settlement patterns. Spatial concepts of geography will be used as a framework for studying interactions between humans and their environments. Using geographic resources, students will employ inquiry, research, and technology skills to ask and answer geographic questions. Particular emphasis is placed on students’ understanding and applying geographic concepts and skills to their daily lives.

The theme for Grade 8 is interaction. The objectives focus on the interactions of people and their environment in such regions of the world as Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and areas of the former Soviet Union. The content is organized around the key concepts of location, place, human and environmental relationships, movement, and regions.

Students will:

• Develop skills for geographical analysis.
• Use maps, globes, photographs, and pictures.
• Analyze how selected physical and ecological processes shape the Earth’s surface.
• Apply the concept of region.
• Locate and analyze physical, economic, and cultural characteristics of world regions, including Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, United States and Canada, North Africa and Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia and the Pacific Islands, and Antarctica.
• Compare and contrast the distribution, growth rates, and characteristics of human population in terms of settlement patterns and the location of natural and capital resources.
• Analyze past and present trends in human migration and cultural interaction as they are influenced by social, economic, political, and environmental factors.
• Identify natural, human, and capital resources and explain their significance.
• Distinguish between developed and developing countries and relate the level of economic development to the standard of living and quality of life.
• Analyze the global patterns and networks of economic interdependence.
• Analyze how the forces of conflict and cooperation affect the division and control of the Earth’s surface.
• Analyze the patterns of urban development.
• Apply geography to interpret the past, understand the present, and plan for the future.