Element I: The World in Spatial Terms
The geographically informed student knows and understands:
STANDARD 1- How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Knows the types, purposes, and characteristics of maps, globes, and other geographic representations.
B. Knows how to display spatial information on maps and other geographic representations.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Compares characteristics, functions, and applications of maps, globes, and geographic representations.
B. Makes and uses maps, globes, graphs, charts, models, and databases to analyze spatial distributions and patterns to solve geographic problems.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Produces maps and other geographic representations to depict geographic problems.
B. Uses geographic tools and supporting technologies to analyze, explain, and solve geographic problems.
STANDARD 2- How to use cognitive maps to organize information about people. places, and environments in spatial context.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Locates places within the local community and in nearby communities.
B. Locates Earth's continents and oceans in relation to each other and to principle parallels and meridians.
C. Locates major physical and human features in the United States and on Earth.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Identifies patterns of distribution of major phusical and human features on a local to global scale.
B. Translates cognitive maps into appropriate graphics to display information and answer geographic questions.
C. Knows how perception influences cognitive maps and attitudes about people and places.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Uses cognitive maps of physical and human features of the world to answer geographic questions.
B. Understands how cognitive maps reflect human perception of places and influence spatial and environmental decision-making.
STANDARD 3- How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on the Earth's surface.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Identifies spatial concepts of location, distance, direction, scale, region, and movement.
B. Recognizes how places and features are distributed spatially across the Earth's surface.
C. Understands causes and consequences of spatial interaction on the Earth's surface.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Uses the concept of space to describe and explain spatial patterns and structures.
B. Creates models illustrating changing patterns of spatial organizations.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Applies concepts of spatial interaction to account for patterns of movement in space.
B. Explains how people perceive and use space.
C. Applies concepts and analyzes models of spatial organization to make decisions.
Element II: Places and Regions
The geographically informed student knows and understands:
STANDARD 4- The physical and human characteristics of places.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Identifies physical and human characteristics of places including landforms, bodies of water, weather, population distributions, settlement patterns, and languages.
B. Recognizes how physical and human processes together shape places.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Recognizes how different physical processes shape and alter places and human culture.
B. Describes the role of technology in shaping the characteristics of places.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Understands the meaning and significance of place.
B. Describes and interprets how changing physical processes shape the features of places.
C. Describes and interprets how the changing social, cultural, and economic processes shape the features of places.
D. Evaluates how relationships between humans and the physical environment lead to the formation of places and to a sense of personal and community identity.
STANDARD 5- The creation of regions by people to interpret the Earth's complexity.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Recognizes the concept of region as an area of the Earth's surface with unifying geographic characteristics.
B. Compares similarities and differences among regions and the ways in which regions change over time.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Explains how and why regions change.
B. Describes and evaluates the connections among regions.
C. Recognizes the influences and effects of regional labels and images.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Lists and explains how multiple criteria can be used to define regions and their structures.
B. Identifies human and physical changes in regions and explains the factors that contrribute to those changes.
C. Interprets the connections within and among the parts of a regional system.
D. Uses regions to analyze geographic issues and answer geographic questions.
STANDARD 6- The influence of culture and experience upon people's perceptions of places and regions.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Demonstrates an awareness of the student's own community and regions from different perspectives.
B. Explores ways in which different people perceive places and regions.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Identifies how personal characteristics, culture, and technology affect perceptions of places and regions.
B. Illustrates and explains how places and regions serve as cultural symbols.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Evaluates why places and regions serve as symbols for individuals and society.
B. Understands why different groups of people within society view places and regions differently.
C. Analyzes how changing perceptions of places and regions reflect cultural change.
Element III: Physical Systems
The geographically informed student knows and understands:
STANDARD 7- The physical processes that shape the patterns of the Earth's surface.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Identifies components of the Earth's physical systems: the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.
B. Recognizes how features on the Earth's surface are shaped by physical processes.
C. Describes how Earth-Sun relations affect the conditions on Earth.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Explains how physical processes shape the physical environment and influence the formation and distribution of resources.
B. Illustrates how Earth-Sun relationships affect physical processes and creates physical patterns on Earth.
C. Predicts the consequences of physical processes on the Earth's surface.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Describes how the dynamics of the four basic physical systems affect different regions of the United States and the world.
B. Assesses how the consequences of the interaction of the four physical processes affect spatial variation across the Earth's surface.
STANDARD 8- The characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems on the Earth's surface.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Identifies the components, distribution, and patterns of ecosystems.
B. Recognizes how humans interact with ecosystems.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Describes the patterns and workings of ecosystems.
B. Explains how physical processes and human activities influence changes in ecosystems.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Analyzes the biodiversity, productivity, and distribution of ecosystems across the Earth's surface.
B. Applies the concept of ecosystems to enchance people's understanding of environmental issues.
Element IV: Human Systems
The geographically informed student knows and understands:
STANDARD 9- The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on the Earth's surface.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Describes and compares characteristics of population and their distribution from local to global scales.
B. Recognizes the causes and effects of human migration.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Describes the demographic structures and analyzes spatial variations in population distribution.
B. Compares the types, historical patterns, and effects of human migration.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Predicts trends in world population numbers and patterns.
B. Delineates the economic, political, and social factors that contribute to human migration.
C. Evaluates the impact of human migration on physical and human systems.
STANDARD 10- The characteristics, distribution, and complexity of the Earth's cultural mosaics.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Identifies how the characteristics of culture affect the ways in which people live.
B. Compares how patterns of culture vary across the Earth's surface and change over time.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Identifies and describes the ways in which communities reflect the culture of their inhabitants on a local to global scale.
B. Illustrates processes of cultural diffusion.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Analyzes how cultural features define and influence the characteristics of regions.
B. Compares the impact of culture on ways of life in different regions.
C. Explains the spatial processes of cultural convergence and divergence.
STANDARD 11- The patterns and networks of economic interdependence on the Earth's surface.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Locates and classifies the spatial distribution of economic activities and factors that influence them.
B. Identifies transportation and communication networks used in daily life.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Describes ways to classify activities and spatial patterns of economic communities.
B. Describes spatial patterns of economic activities and their relationship to global interdependence.
C. Analyzes how changes in technology, transportation, and communities affect the location of economic activities.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Identifies and analyzes the historical movement patterns of people and goods and their relationship to economic activities.
B. Classifies, describes, and evaluates the spatial distribution of major economic systems.
C. Analyzes and evaluates international economic issues from a spatial point of view.
STANDARD 12- The processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Identifies the types and spatial patterns of settlement and how they change over time.
B. Describes the factors that affect where people settle.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Identifies the spatial patterns of settlement in different regions of the world.
B. Describes and explains the causes, consequences, and spatial structure of urban settlements.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Classifies the characteristics of settlements in developing and developed countries.
B. Describes the nature, causes, and geographic impact of change in urban areas.
C. Evaluates the physical and human impacts of both emerging and evolving urban forms.
STANDARD 13- The influential forces of cooperation and conflict among people regarding the division and control of the Earth's surface.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Describes how people divide the Earth's surface into various types of territorial units.
B. Identifies the characteristics of political, social, and economic units from local to global scales.
C. Describes how cooperation and conflict affect places in the local community.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Identifies and analyzes the multiple territorial divisions of the student's own world.
B. Describes how cooperation and conflict among people contribute to political divisions of the Earth's surface.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Explains how cooperation and conflict shape the distribution of social, political, and economic entities on Earth.
B. Analyzes how differing points of view play a role in conflict over territory and resources.
Element V: Environment and Society
The geographically informed student knows and understands:
STANDARD 14- The modifications of human actions upon the physical environment.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Describes how people depend upon and modify the physical environment.
B. Identifies how the physical environment can both accommodate and be engaged by human activities.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Explains the consequences of human modification of the physical environment and the role of technology in that change.
B. Relates how human modifications of the physical environment in one place can cause changes in other places.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Evaluates the ways in which technology has expanded the human capability to modify the physical environment.
B. Describes and predicts the global impact of human changes in the physical environment.
C. Develops appropriate models to foster the understanding of environmental problems.
STANDARD 15- The effects of physical systems upon human systems.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Describes how humans adapt to variations in the physical environment.
B. Identifies ways the physical environment provides opportunities and constraints upon human activities.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Explains how humans respond to variations in physical systems.
B. Illustrates how natural hazards affect human activity.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Analyzes changes in the physical environment that have reduced the capacity of the environment to support human activity.
B. Designs strategies to respond to the constraints placed on human systems by the physical environment.
C. Explains how humans perceive and react to natural hazards.
STANDARD 16- The changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Identifies the characteristics and spatial distribution of renewable, nonrenewable, and flow resources (e.g. water and wind).
B. Describes the meaning and role of resources in daily life.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Describes and analyzes how culture and technology affect the definitions of, access to, and uses of resources.
B. Explores the role of energy resources in society.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Analyzes how the spatial distribution of resources affects patterns of human settlement.
B. Explains how resource development and use change over time.
C. Evaluates policy decisions regarding the use of resources on different spatial scales.
Element VI: The Uses of Geography
The geographically informed student knows, understands, and can use:
STANDARD 17- The applications of geography to interpret the past.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Describes how places and geographic contexts influence people and events.
B. Understands that people's perceptions of places and geographic contexts change over time.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Traces how the spatial organization of a society changes over time.
B. Explains how geographic contexts and people's differing perceptions have influenced events and conditions in the past.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Analyzes the ways in which physical and human features have influenced the evolution of significant historic events and movements.
B. Assesses how people's changing perceptions of geographic features have led to changes in human societies.
C. Understands the fundamental role that geographical context has played in affecting history.
STANDARD 18- Geography to interpret the present and plan for the future.
The Grade 4 student:
A. Describes the changing nature of geographic context.
B. Explores the geographic aspects of social and environmental problems.
C. Describes how people's perceptions affect their interpretation of the world.
The Grade 8 student:
A. Explains and predicts how the interaction of physical and human systems may shape present and future conditions on Earth.
B. Integrates varying points of view to solve social and environmental problems by making geographically informed decisions.
The Grade 12 student:
A. Develops policies to guide the use of management of resources that reflect multiple points of view.
B. Analyzes contemporary issues in the context of spatial and environmental perspectives.
C. Uses geographic knowledge, skills, and perspectives to analyze problems and make decisions.
Geographic Alliance
In Nevada