Geography Standard Two

Students will develop a knowledge of the ways humans modify and respond to the natural environment [ENVIRONMENT].

The relationship between human needs and the natural environment is fundamental to life. Humans modify the environment in culturally distinctive ways as they respond to the resource opportunities and risks present in the physical world. To understand this relationship, students must know of the major processes which shape the world into distinctive physical environments, and gains awareness of the opportunities and limitations to human action presented by those environments.

The complexity of the standard will increase at each succeeding grade cluster:

• K-3:
  • Students will distinguish different types of climate and landforms and explain why they occur.
• 4-5:
  • Students will apply a knowledge of topography, climate, soils, and vegetation of Delaware and the United States to understand how human society alters, and is affected by, the physical environment.
• 6-8:
  • Students will apply a knowledge of the major processes shaping natural environments to understand how different peoples have changed and been affected by, physical environments in the world's sub-regions.
• 9-12:
  • Students will understand the Earth's physical environment as a set of interconnected systems (ecosystems) and the ways humans have perceived, reacted to, and changed environments at local to global scales.