Search every subject world, from Preschool to Grade 12. The first five courses of every subject path are free.
116 courses
Geography · Preschool
Children meet the first words of geography: near and far, and on, under and beside. Olly the owl explores a park and a bedroom, and children point, sort and move real toys with a grown-up to show where things are.
Geography · Preschool
A room is a small place with smaller places inside it. Children learn that a learning space has areas for different things (a book corner, an art table, a block area), find where things belong at tidy-up time, and use near and beside to say where an area is.
Geography · Preschool
A route is the way we go from one place to another. Children follow Olly's picture routes in order (first, next, last) and learn that landmarks, big things that stay in one place, help us find the way.
Geography · Preschool
A model is a small copy of something big. Children sort real things from models, give each thing in a room one block to stand for it, and build a model of a familiar room with boxes and blocks, putting each piece near or beside the right things.
Geography · Preschool
Outside, the world is made of land and water. Children sort what belongs on land and in water, meet four outdoor places (park, beach, farm and forest) and what we find there, and practice simple ways to care for places outside.
Geography · Preschool
Olly flies over the park and looks down: a map is a picture of a place seen from above. Children see that the small pictures on a map stand for real things, find and count things on a picture map, say what is near or beside, and draw their first map of a room with a grown-up.
Geography · Pre-K
Children grow their position words beyond near, on and under: above and below, in front of and behind, between, inside and outside. They spot positions in pictures, sort things that belong inside or outside a home, and act the words out with their own bodies in an 'Olly says' movement game.
Geography · Pre-K
Routes get longer and come with turns. Children follow and retell four-stop routes in order, count the landmarks they pass, and learn what makes directions clear: name a landmark that stays put and say what to do there.
Geography · Pre-K
Maps use symbols: small pictures or shapes that stand for real things. Children match symbols to the things they stand for, meet their first map key (a list that tells what each symbol means), and use the key to find and count places on a picture map of a campground and a park.
Geography · Pre-K
Land and water come in different shapes. Children learn the names of three land shapes (mountain, hill, island) and three kinds of water (river, lake, ocean), sort them, and then build them in a sand tray model: a tall pile for a mountain, a long wet path for a river, a mound with water all around for an island.
Geography · Pre-K
Weather changes what we wear and do, and some places are usually hot while others are usually cold. Children name kinds of weather, pick clothes for sunny, rainy and snowy days, and sort things that belong in a hot, dry desert or an icy cold place.
Geography · Pre-K
A neighborhood is a group of homes and places close together. Children name neighborhood places and what each is for, read a picture map of pretend Olly Street with a key, follow a route along it, and then make their own pretend neighborhood map with paper shapes.
Geography · Kindergarten
Children learn the words geographers use to tell where things are (above, below, beside, between, in front of, behind), sort out left and right on their own bodies and for a friend who faces them, and then tell a route in order with a start, landmarks, turns and a finish. A garden robot shows that turning left or right depends on the way you face.
Geography · Kindergarten
Children discover that a model is a small copy of something real, learn to see things from straight above like a bird (a cup's top is a circle, a table top is a rectangle), and then follow a real room as it becomes a block model and finally a flat map. They finish by sorting what a map can show from what it cannot.
Geography · Kindergarten
Children learn that a map symbol is a small picture or mark that stands for a real thing, use a map key to find out what each symbol means (even when the symbol is a star or a flag), and then read picture maps: counting one kind of symbol and telling what is beside what.
Geography · Kindergarten
Children spin a globe to discover that most of the Earth is covered by water, then learn the shapes of the land (mountain, hill, island, volcano, desert) and the shapes of water (ocean, lake, river, waterfall). They find land and oceans on a real world map and build landforms in a tray at home.
Geography · Kindergarten
Children name kinds of weather and their symbols (sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, windy, stormy) and learn to go indoors when they hear thunder. They put the four seasons in order and find out that some places are warm all year while others are cold almost all year. Finally they choose clothes for hot and cold places and read a simple weather chart.
Geography · Kindergarten
Children discover that places fit inside bigger places, like stacking cups: classroom, school, neighborhood, town, state and country. They meet the community places that help everyone and the helpers who work there, and they learn the basic rules for getting around safely: walk with a grown-up, cross at a crosswalk, and stop, look and listen.
Geography · Kindergarten
Children use clues (buildings, traffic, people, open land) to tell a city, a town and a farm area apart, then compare two places kindly by saying how they are the same and how they are different. They finish by sorting helpful and harmful actions and choosing a real way to care for a place.
Geography · Kindergarten
In this capstone, children put the whole kindergarten path together: they plan a map with a title, symbols and a key, design symbols that are simple and different, and explain a route on a map with a start, landmarks, turns and a stop. They finish by drawing a map of one room at home and guiding a grown-up along a route on it.
Geography · Grade 1
Learners meet the three helpers on every map: the title, the symbols and the key. They use a key to find places on picture maps of a made-up town, describe where things are using landmarks and location words, and finish by making a key for their own map.
Geography · Grade 1
Learners meet north, south, east and west on a compass rose, use them to tell where places are on picture maps, and move step by step on grid maps of a make-believe park. They finish by using the sun, which seems to rise in the east and set in the west, as a natural direction helper.
Geography · Grade 1
Learners read a map of a make-believe school to find rooms and exits, explore the goods and services that neighborhood places provide, learn what each part of an address means using made-up addresses (and why real addresses stay private), and see how neighborhoods change over time.
Geography · Grade 1
Learners name the shapes of the land (mountain, hill, valley, plain) and the kinds of water (ocean, lake, river, pond), tell salt water from fresh water, and tell islands from peninsulas on simple grid maps. They then find four real places on a world map (the Pacific Ocean, the Rocky Mountains, Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River) and explain why so many towns and cities grow up beside water.
Geography · Grade 1
Learners describe weather with four parts (temperature, rain or snow, wind and clouds), meet three weather tools and read a thermometer marked in tens, and read a class weather record to count and compare days. They finish by choosing clothes, activities and travel plans that fit the weather, and by learning simple, widely taught weather-safety rules.
Geography · Grade 1
Learners discover the needs every community shares (food, water, shelter, ways to get around and work), then visit three real cities far away: Venice in Italy, built on islands with canals; Cairo in Egypt, beside the Nile with desert all around; and Tokyo in Japan, an enormous city of trains. They find each country on a world map and compare these cities respectfully with a U.S. town.
Geography · Grade 1
Learners discover that every map has a job: park maps, bus route maps, zoo maps and weather maps each show different things. They read a grid map of a make-believe park by counting squares and using directions, compare two maps of the same park made for different jobs, and practice choosing the map that answers a question.
Geography · Grade 1
Learners find the barriers and helps along a route (stairs and ramps, high curbs and curb cuts, elevators, crosswalks and wide, smooth paths), read accessibility symbols on map keys, and plan and compare routes on grid maps by counting blocks and avoiding barriers. They finish by explaining a route choice with evidence from the map, so that a route works for everyone.
Geography · Grade 2
Maps use three kinds of symbols (points, lines and areas) and a compass rose with eight directions. Learners read keys with colors and shapes, add the in-between directions NE, NW, SE and SW, give and follow directions on a park map, and use directions to describe where real states are from Illinois.
Geography · Grade 2
A grid turns a map into squares, so every place gets an address. Learners find places with letter–number references like B3, plot points on a number grid by counting across and then up, build a grid map of a made-up park where big features cover several squares, and count squares to compare routes.
Geography · Grade 2
Earth's land is split into seven continents and its water into five oceans. Learners find every continent and ocean on a world map, spin a globe to compare it with a flat map, use the equator and the North and South Poles as guide marks, and put continents and oceans in order of size, starting with our own continent, North America.
Geography · Grade 2
Rivers have parts, and coasts have shapes. Learners follow a river from its source to its mouth, see how the Missouri and Ohio rivers feed the Mississippi and how the Mississippi built its delta, name coastal features such as bays, peninsulas, cliffs and harbors, find real examples on a map, and discover that moving water slowly wears land away in some places and builds it up in others.
Geography · Grade 2
Natural resources are things from nature that people use: water, soil, trees, rocks and minerals, plants and animals, sunlight and wind. Learners trace products back to the resources they come from, read a resource map with a key, explain why communities grow near resources (with real examples from Illinois and California), and choose ways to conserve resources by reducing, reusing and recycling.
Geography · Grade 2
People and goods move by land, water and air, along roads, railroads, waterways and air routes. Learners sort kinds of transportation, choose a way to travel by weighing time, cost and what is carried, add and compare miles and minutes on a route map, and follow goods such as corn and bananas on journeys that use more than one kind of transportation and cross real oceans.
Geography · Grade 2
How are places alike and different, and how do we know? Learners describe urban, suburban and rural communities from clues, read tables and bar charts to compare places (including real average temperatures and precipitation for Chicago, Miami and Denver), highlight the sentences in a text that are evidence, and make claims that are backed by evidence instead of opinions.
Geography · Grade 2
An atlas is a book of maps. Learners use an atlas's contents page and its index with letter-number squares, name the parts every atlas page needs (title, key, compass rose, scale, and pictures with captions), measure distances with a simple scale where 1 square = 1 block, and then plan, build and check their own illustrated atlas page for a made-up home region, keeping real addresses private.
Geography · Grade 3
A map is much smaller than the real place, so mapmakers add a scale that says how map distance turns into real distance, and a grid that gives every place a square address. Learners measure with scale bars, find and give letter–number grid references, choose between zoomed-in and zoomed-out maps, and plan a hiking trip using scale.
Geography · Grade 3
Every place has physical features made by nature (rivers, hills, lakes) and human features made by people (roads, bridges, farms, cities). Learners classify features, discover how rivers, flat land and lakes shaped where Chicago and St. Louis grew, weigh the benefits and costs of big changes such as Hoover Dam and Mississippi River levees, and describe a place using both kinds of features.
Geography · Grade 3
A region is an area whose places share something: landforms, climate, ways of earning a living or culture. Learners meet the five-region model of the United States, find Illinois in the Midwest and locate states on a map, explore the three big regions of Illinois from the Chicago area to the Shawnee Hills, and discover that different mapmakers draw regions differently.
Geography · Grade 3
Rivers flow downhill from a source to a mouth, gathering water from a whole watershed on the way. Learners follow a raindrop from an Illinois field to the Gulf of Mexico, meet Illinois's big rivers (Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, Rock and Kaskaskia), study how people use rivers and Lake Michigan for drinking water, farming and shipping, and decide how to keep water clean for everyone downstream.
Geography · Grade 3
Weather is what the air is doing today; climate is the usual pattern over many years. Learners sort weather from climate, read average temperature and precipitation for Chicago, Miami and Denver, discover three location clues that shape climate (distance from the equator, nearness to big water and elevation), and use them to predict the climate of Quito, a city on the equator high in the Andes.
Geography · Grade 3
Where do people live, and why? Learners measure population and population density with friendly numbers, compare urban, suburban and rural communities, explain why towns grew at rivers, crossroads and good farmland, and read Illinois data to see that most of the state's 12.8 million people live in the Chicago area.
Geography · Grade 3
Maps are evidence for decisions. On a made-up county map, learners read the key, scale and directions, measure two routes to the same park, weigh barriers such as a footbridge, a steep hill and a busy road, decide which route is best for different travelers, and write a route recommendation backed by map evidence.
Geography · Grade 3
The Grade 3 capstone. Learners plan a field guide to a region: they learn the parts of a guide, gather and sort facts about the Shawnee Hills of southern Illinois from a source pack, check facts against opinions and judge which sources to trust, then write and revise a field-guide entry with map evidence. The quiz asks them to do the same for the Great Lakes region.
Geography · Grade 4
A town map can use a letter–number grid, but the whole round Earth needs a grid of its own. Learners meet the equator and the prime meridian, name the four hemispheres, learn how parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude measure degrees north, south, east and west, read and write whole-degree coordinates for real cities, and use coordinates to find places on a world map.
Geography · Grade 4
From the Sierra Nevada to the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the United States crosses mountains, basins, plains, great rivers and a famous canyon. Learners place all 50 states in the five classroom regions, locate states and features with coordinates, read an elevation profile across the country, follow the Mississippi River from source to mouth, and explain how landforms and water shape the way people live and work in each region.
Geography · Grade 4
The five Great Lakes hold about one-fifth of the world's surface fresh water, and Illinois sits on one of them. Learners compare the lakes with real data, trace a drop of water from Lake Superior to the Atlantic, discover how Ice Age glaciers scooped out the lake basins and flattened Illinois, follow the story of the Chicago Portage, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the reversal of the Chicago River, and weigh how the lakes help people and how people help or harm the lakes.
Geography · Grade 4
Earth's surface is always changing, sometimes in seconds and sometimes over millions of years. Learners see how weathering, erosion and deposition carved the Grand Canyon and built the Mississippi Delta, learn that Earth's outer layer is broken into moving plates that cause earthquakes and volcanoes such as Mount St. Helens and Kīlauea, and sort and order changes from fast to slow, including how people prepare for sudden ones.
Geography · Grade 4
Why is Singapore warm all year while Chicago freezes in January, and why is Nevada a desert next to snowy mountains? Learners sort places into five climate groups, explain the controls behind them (latitude, water, elevation and mountains that make rain shadows), read climographs for made-up towns to identify their climate, and examine how people adapt to and change their environments, from adobe walls and terraces to irrigation and air conditioning, with benefits and costs.
Geography · Grade 4
Illinois sits on some of the richest farmland in the world, on top of coal and beside the Great Lakes and great rivers. Learners sort renewable and non-renewable resources, map Illinois's resources, discover why towns such as Galena, Peoria, Rock Island and Chicago grew where they did, read Chicago's population growth from a chart, and compare barges, trains, trucks and planes to explain why transportation hubs grow.
Geography · Grade 4
A thematic map shows one theme, such as landforms, borders, people, climate, land use or resources. Learners choose the right map for a question, read a shaded map's key and sort real 2020 census populations into its classes, compare two maps of a made-up region to find a pattern, and learn that two matching patterns do not prove that one causes the other. They finish by writing a careful, evidence-based claim.
Geography · Grade 4
The Grade 4 capstone. Made-up Willow County needs room for 200 new homes and a new park, but it also has a river that floods, a wetland full of wildlife and some of the best farmland in the state. Learners study how people and places shape each other, read the county's planning map for evidence, listen to stakeholders, score three sites against criteria, see how the best choice changes when some criteria count more, and write a recommendation that admits its trade-offs.
Geography · Grade 5
Learners sharpen their use of latitude and longitude to the half degree, find places on a world map from coordinates and estimate north–south distances (1° of latitude is about 69 miles). They then read map scale written as a ratio such as 1:100,000, and discover why every flat world map stretches something, so they can choose a globe, a Mercator map or an equal-area map for a job.
Geography · Grade 5
Learners revisit the seven continents and five oceans and order them by real area, then compare where the world's eight billion people live: more than half in Asia, the next-largest share in Africa, and no permanent residents in Antarctica. They learn that world regions such as Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia are groupings people make for a purpose, that atlases draw them differently, and they locate the regions and example countries on the world map.
Geography · Grade 5
A tour of the whole continent of North America, from Canada's Arctic islands to Panama. Learners locate its countries (including the seven countries of Central America and the main Caribbean islands), its great physical regions from the Canadian Shield to the Sierra Madre, and its rivers, lakes and seas, from the Mississippi–Missouri system to Hudson Bay. They finish by comparing elevations, from Denali at 20,310 feet to Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level.
Geography · Grade 5
Where do 331 million Americans live, and why there? Learners calculate and compare population density, explain why the largest cities grew where they did, read census data showing that about four in five Americans live in urban areas and that the population has shifted toward the South and West, and explore the country's cultural diversity and the many kinds of work in each region.
Geography · Grade 5
Learners discover that climate, above all temperature and precipitation, decides which plants and animals can live in a place, creating Earth's great biomes: tundra, taiga, temperate deciduous forest, grassland, desert, tropical rainforest and the ocean. They read climographs to identify a biome, find biome patterns on the world map, and trace the resources each biome gives people, from maple syrup to copper, along with ways to use them without using them up.
Geography · Grade 5
People, goods and ideas are always on the move. Learners explain migration with push and pull factors, using the Great Migration of about six million African Americans from the South to Northern, Midwestern and Western cities as a central example. They find out why places specialize and trade, tell imports from exports, follow container ships through the Panama Canal (1914) and the St. Lawrence Seaway (1959), and trace a product's journey through ports, rail hubs and highways.
Geography · Grade 5
Maps and graphs look certain, but they are made by people who choose what to show. Learners check a map's title, key, units, source and date before trusting it; see how color classes, totals versus rates and a squeezed graph axis can change the message of the same data; separate claims the data supports from claims that go beyond it (a shared pattern is not proof of cause); and write a short data claim with evidence and a limit.
Geography · Grade 5
The Grade 5 capstone. Learners plan and build a comparative atlas of Canada and Mexico, the United States' two neighbors: a locator map, physical and climate pages, population and economy pages, and a comparison page with conclusions backed by rounded data and a clear limit. They choose the right map or graph for each question, use coordinates, scale, density and climate data from the whole year, and then transfer the process to a new pair of countries, Australia and Brazil.
Geography · Grade 6
Learners use a linked 3D globe and flat map to give every place an address in latitude and longitude, switch between degree–minute and decimal notation, and work through the tricky cases: the equator, the prime meridian, island countries and the 180° line through Fiji. They then measure with map scale and discover why every flat world map stretches something, so they can judge which projection suits a purpose.
Geography · Grade 6
Learners discover the two sets of forces that shape Earth's surface: moving tectonic plates that build mountains, volcanoes and trenches, and weathering, erosion and deposition that wear the land down and rebuild it elsewhere. They follow a river from source to mouth, then read maps and elevation profiles to explain real landscapes from Iceland to the Himalaya and the Andes.
Geography · Grade 6
Learners separate weather from climate, read climographs, and investigate the controls that make places hot or cold, wet or dry: latitude, altitude, distance from the sea, ocean currents, winds and mountains. They classify climates with a simplified Köppen key and connect each climate to the biome that grows there, locating rainforests, deserts and boreal forests on the world map.
Geography · Grade 6
Why do more than eight billion people crowd into some places and leave others almost empty? Learners map dense and sparse regions, explain them with physical and human factors, calculate population density and see what an average can hide. They then investigate why settlements grow where they do — site and situation — and classify settlement patterns and the settlement hierarchy.
Geography · Grade 6
Learners find out how little of Earth's water is fresh and reachable, why some places run short, and what dams, wells, irrigation and desalination cost as well as give. They explain where the world's staple foods are grown, classify resources as renewable or non-renewable, and investigate why valuable resources such as cobalt and oil are concentrated in a few places, ending with a written recommendation for a water-short region.
Geography · Grade 6
What makes a region, and who decides where it ends? Learners meet formal, functional and perceptual regions, then tour the regions of Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania, comparing them with physical and human evidence such as landforms, climate, population and age. They finish by tracing the routes that connect these regions, from the Silk Roads and monsoon winds to the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca.
Geography · Grade 6
Maps look certain, but every map is built from data that someone collected, at some date, by some method, for some purpose. Learners trace where geographic data comes from, run a sampling simulation to see why sample size matters, read the main kinds of thematic map, and learn the warning signs of an unreliable map — out-of-date borders, missing places, hidden sources and misleading choices. They finish by critiquing a map with a reliability checklist.
Geography · Grade 6
In this capstone, learners plan a (simulated) student field expedition to Iceland to study where two tectonic plates pull apart and how a great ice cap shapes the land. They locate the study sites with coordinates, choose the season from climate and daylight data, plan a route with map scale and settlements for supplies, weigh hazards and the reliability of their sources, and write an expedition proposal backed by evidence.
Geography · Grade 7
Learners reason like spatial thinkers: describing places by absolute and relative location, spotting clustered, dispersed and linear patterns, and seeing how a pattern can appear or vanish when the scale of analysis changes. They discover why the shortest flight between two cities looks curved on a flat map, estimate great-circle distances, and use longitude to work out time differences and explain time zones.
Geography · Grade 7
Why do people move, and why are cities growing so fast? Learners use push and pull factors, obstacles and opportunities to explain migration, classify different kinds of moves, and read UN data showing the world becoming mostly urban. They investigate megacities such as Lagos and Dhaka — their opportunities as well as their challenges — and practise describing migration with accurate data and balanced language.
Geography · Grade 7
Learners read culture in the landscape — signs, buildings, fields and food — then map how the world's roughly 7,000 languages and its major belief systems are distributed and how they spread through migration, trade, empire and technology. They finish by exploring regional identity: how mountains, oceans, history and language combine to give places such as Switzerland, Papua New Guinea and Polynesia their character.
Geography · Grade 7
Learners follow food from farm to plate to see how economies work: the four economic sectors and how jobs shift between them, the supply chain that turns cocoa beans in West Africa into chocolate bars elsewhere, and where the value is added along the way. They measure the hidden 'virtual water' in foods, then explain why countries trade and how a dry country can save water by importing food.
Geography · Grade 7
Learners tour the regions of the Western Hemisphere — Canada and the United States, Middle America and the Caribbean, and South America's Andes, Amazon and Southern Cone — and compare them with data. They then study the connections that tie regions together, from the Panama Canal and trade agreements to migration corridors, and analyse how a disruption in one place, such as a drought at the canal, ripples out to others.
Geography · Grade 7
Why do some earthquakes, cyclones and droughts become disasters while others do not? Learners explain where geophysical and weather hazards occur and why, examine how a warming climate is changing some of them, and use the idea that risk depends on the hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Comparing the Indian state of Odisha's cyclones of 1999 and 2013 shows how warnings and preparation save lives, and learners finish by designing a resilience plan for a coastal town.
Geography · Grade 7
'The biggest polluter', 'the most dangerous region', 'crime up 50%' — geographic claims are everywhere. Learners discover how the same data can tell different stories depending on whether we use totals or rates, how map design and class breaks change a map's message, and how graphs and maps can mislead. They finish by testing claims against data and writing a supported verdict.
Geography · Grade 7
In this inquiry capstone, learners investigate one big question about a real place: how and why is Vietnam's Mekong Delta — home to about 17 million people and much of the country's rice — changing? They frame sub-questions at several scales, judge the reliability of sources, trace causes from local wells to dams in other countries and global sea-level rise, and communicate a conclusion with limitations. They then plan an inquiry of their own about a new place.
Geography · Grade 8
How does a phone know where it is? How can satellites spot a forest being cleared? Learners investigate the three great geospatial tools — satellite positioning (GNSS), remote sensing and GIS layers — and then turn a critical eye on the maps those tools produce: the Mercator–Peters debate, the Web Mercator maps on our screens, and how centring and orientation shape the way we see the world.
Geography · Grade 8
Why is Niger's population among the youngest in the world while Japan's is among the oldest? Learners calculate birth, death and natural increase rates and doubling times, read population pyramids and dependency ratios, and use the demographic transition model — with its limits — to explain differences between countries. They finish by using demographic evidence to advise a government on schools, jobs and care for older people.
Geography · Grade 8
Learners use accurate terms — refugee, asylum seeker, internally displaced person, migrant — to describe who moves and why, and examine where displaced people actually live. They trace the money and networks migration creates, such as remittances and diasporas, and read how migrant communities reshape places, from London's Brick Lane to Chinatowns. They finish by comparing how different people experience and represent the same place.
Geography · Grade 8
Who decides where one country ends and another begins? Learners distinguish states from nations, explore how boundaries follow mountains, rivers, straight survey lines and cultural divides, and calculate the zones countries control at sea under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. They then examine how disputes are described, mapped and managed — from the treaty that sets aside claims to Antarctica to the different maps sold in different countries.
Geography · Grade 8
Learners compare farming systems from Dutch greenhouses to Australian cattle stations, explain why industries locate where they do and why old industrial regions such as Germany's Ruhr changed, and follow the container ships, ports and just-in-time supply chains that link factories across continents. Case studies such as the 2011 floods in Thailand show how a disruption in one place can ripple through global networks.
Geography · Grade 8
Cities are systems that take in water, food and energy and send out goods, waste and emissions. Learners map the zones and functions of cities, measure a city's resource flows, and examine how real cities made hard choices — Cape Town's response to its 2018 water crisis, Curitiba's bus system and Copenhagen's cycling network. They finish by using a weighted decision matrix to recommend a resource decision for a growing city.
Geography · Grade 8
Learners examine the evidence that Earth's climate is changing — rising carbon dioxide, temperatures and seas and shrinking ice — and how the impacts differ from Arctic coasts to low-lying Pacific islands and great river deltas. They distinguish mitigation from adaptation, evaluate strategies such as the Netherlands' 'Room for the River', and use the three dimensions of sustainability to judge a city's climate plan.
Geography · Grade 8
In this capstone, learners act as human geography researchers. They frame a research question and hypothesis, plan ethical data collection, turn raw counts into fair rates and choose how to map them, then build a map-based argument with a claim, evidence, reasoning, a counterclaim and a rebuttal. Using a fictional city's park-access data and real global internet-use data, they critique and improve map arguments before writing one of their own.
Geography · Grade 9
High-school geography begins with two tools: good questions and well-defined regions. Learners practise the geographer's question chain (Where? Why there? So what?) and the five themes, then delineate regions with explicit criteria and thresholds — from the world's five Mediterranean-climate zones to overlapping definitions of the Arab world and Sub-Saharan Africa. They compare world regions with UN population data and frame an inquiry of their own.
Geography · Grade 9
A quantitative return to the geographer's basic tools. Learners link the number of decimal places in a coordinate to distance on the ground, calculate great-circle distances with the spherical law of cosines and compare them with constant-bearing routes, solve time-zone and date-line problems, and measure projection distortion with scale factors and Tissot's indicatrix before choosing projections for real tasks.
Geography · Grade 9
Learners read landscapes as records of process and time. They examine the evidence for plate tectonics — magnetic stripes, ocean-floor ages and the Hawaiian hotspot chain — and calculate plate speeds; link rock type to landscapes such as karst; explain river, glacial, coastal and desert landforms process by process; and use rates of change to reconstruct how a landscape formed.
Geography · Grade 9
Why are the world's great deserts near 30° and its rainforests near the equator? Learners build the three-cell model of global circulation, follow the seasonal migration of the ITCZ that drives monsoons, and trace ocean currents, upwelling and El Niño. They classify climates with Köppen codes from monthly data and explain the global pattern of biomes and their productivity, finishing with a transect across Africa.
Geography · Grade 9
Learners apply three classic models to real and illustrative data. They track a country through the demographic transition from birth- and death-rate series, test Ravenstein's 'laws' and Lee's model against migration evidence such as China's vast internal migration, and use central place theory — threshold, range and Christaller's hexagons — to explain settlement hierarchies. They finish by measuring settlement patterns with the nearest-neighbour index.
Geography · Grade 9
Learners investigate how cultures and languages change across space: how lingua francas, pidgins and creoles arise; why languages become endangered and how communities such as Welsh and Māori speakers revitalise them; how pilgrimage creates flows of people to sacred places with many meanings; and how globalisation, local adaptation and place-naming reshape identity. Census data and real cases anchor every claim.
Geography · Grade 9
Learners analyse why resources are concentrated in particular places, distinguish reserves from production and calculate how long reserves might last. They work through comparative advantage with numbers, examine the risks of depending on one export, and map the maritime chokepoints — Hormuz, Malacca, Bab-el-Mandeb, Suez and Panama — through which much of world trade must squeeze, evaluating what happens when one is disrupted.
Geography · Grade 9
In this capstone, learners become atlas makers. They plan atlas pages for a purpose and audience, choose map types and projections, find and cite trustworthy data with full metadata, design honest maps with sensible classes and colour schemes, and write commentary that describes, explains and qualifies a pattern. Worked pages on access to electricity and on earthquakes model the process before learners plan their own page.
Geography · Grade 10
Learners build the toolkit of spatial thinking used throughout human geography: core concepts such as distance, density, distribution, connectivity and diffusion; data types and levels of measurement; sources from censuses to satellite and mobile-phone data; simple spatial statistics such as the weighted mean centre; and the ways scale and aggregation can change — or mislead — our conclusions.
Geography · Grade 10
Learners test the big models of population geography against evidence: the demographic and epidemiological transitions, the debate between Malthus and Boserup about population and food, the gravity model of interaction and Zelinsky's mobility transition. They then evaluate real population policies — from China's one-child policy to Bangladesh's voluntary family planning and Hungary's pronatalist incentives — weighing outcomes and ethics.
Geography · Grade 10
How do ideas, practices and innovations spread, and how do they leave their mark on the land? Learners read cultural landscapes as layered records (Sauer's cultural landscape and Whittlesey's sequent occupance), classify types of diffusion and the barriers that slow them, examine how time–space compression changes folk and popular culture, and model diffusion with Hägerstrand's spatial approach and the S-shaped adoption curve.
Geography · Grade 10
Building on Grade 8's foundations, learners analyse how boundaries originate (antecedent, subsequent, consequent, superimposed and relic), how a state's shape can help or hinder unity, how centripetal and centrifugal forces push states toward cohesion or devolution, and how supranational organisations share sovereignty. They finish with electoral geography, working through how district lines can change election outcomes and how different countries try to draw them fairly.
Geography · Grade 10
Learners trace farming from its hearths in the Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica and the Andes through three agricultural revolutions to today's global food system. They calculate land rent with von Thünen's model, analyse the Green Revolution's gains and costs, use the four dimensions of food security to explain hunger and food deserts, and evaluate strategies for a more sustainable food system.
Geography · Grade 10
How should we measure development, and why have some places industrialised faster than others? Learners calculate parts of the Human Development Index and compare it with income measures, test Rostow's stages and world-systems theory against evidence, examine how foreign investment and special economic zones transformed places such as Shenzhen and Bangladesh's garment industry, and evaluate development strategies from export-led growth to fair trade and microfinance.
Geography · Grade 10
Learners compare the classic models of urban structure — concentric zones, sectors, multiple nuclei and the Latin American city — and test them against real cities. They analyse national city systems with the rank-size rule and primacy, examine how sprawl, gentrification and informal settlements change cities and who gains or loses, and evaluate infrastructure responses such as Medellín's cable cars and in-situ upgrading.
Geography · Grade 10
In this capstone, learners carry out a structured human-geography inquiry into how housing costs change across a (fictional) city. They write a hypothesis and null hypothesis, choose a sampling strategy and ethical methods, test the pattern with Spearman's rank correlation, combine the numbers with coded interview evidence, and link their conclusions to urban models — then design an inquiry of their own.
Geography · Grade 11
Learners begin geospatial analysis the way professionals do: by framing questions a GIS can answer and choosing data fit for that purpose. They classify spatial questions, compare sources from censuses and satellite constellations to OpenStreetMap, read metadata including coordinate reference systems, and quantify positional accuracy with root-mean-square error before judging whether a dataset is good enough for a task.
Geography · Grade 11
Measurements taken from maps are only as good as the projection, coordinate system and data behind them. Learners classify projections by developable surface and tangency, correct map measurements with scale factors (including UTM's 0.9996), work out UTM zones and recognise datum shifts, then distinguish precision from accuracy, identify sources of GNSS error and propagate measurement error into derived lengths and areas.
Geography · Grade 11
Every GIS stores the world in one of two ways: as vector features (points, lines and polygons with attributes) or as raster grids of cells. Learners choose a data model for a phenomenon and scale, reason about raster resolution and mixed pixels, calculate slope and reclassify a digital elevation model, and chain vector operations such as buffer and overlay into a site-suitability workflow.
Geography · Grade 11
Satellites have recorded Earth's land surface continuously since 1972. Learners separate land cover from land use and distinguish proximate from underlying drivers of change, calculate and interpret the vegetation index NDVI, measure change with a before-and-after change matrix and an accuracy check, and explain the urban heat island and the land-use choices that can reduce it.
Geography · Grade 11
Roads, railways, pipes and power lines are networks, and network geography decides who can reach jobs, schools and clinics. Learners model infrastructure as graphs and measure connectivity, find least-time routes on a weighted network, measure accessibility with travel times, isochrones and service areas, and evaluate infrastructure options for equity and resilience.
Geography · Grade 11
A natural hazard becomes a disaster only when it meets exposed, vulnerable people. Learners break risk into hazard, exposure, vulnerability and capacity, read hazard maps and calculate the probability of a '100-year' event over a lifetime, compare the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile using evidence beyond magnitude, and evaluate risk-reduction strategies against the priorities of the Sendai Framework.
Geography · Grade 11
Maps and location data are persuasive, and they can expose people. Learners test geographic claims by checking denominators and the ecological fallacy, explain why location data is hard to anonymise and apply protections such as aggregation, suppression and geomasking, use consent and Indigenous data sovereignty principles (CARE alongside FAIR), and spot map choices that make weak claims look strong.
Geography · Grade 11
In this capstone, learners run a complete geospatial project on summer heat in the fictional city of Marlow Vale. They design the project and harmonise a data inventory, combine rasters and vectors with zonal statistics and correlation while watching for spatial autocorrelation, measure walking access to cooling centres for older residents, and test, document and communicate their findings with sensitivity analysis, limitations and an ethics check.
Geography · Grade 12
Good geographic research starts with a good question. Learners refine broad topics into focused, researchable spatial questions; define the spatial extent, unit of analysis and time frame and anticipate scale effects; turn abstract concepts into measurable indicators and testable hypotheses with spatial expectations; and judge a plan's feasibility and ethics, including sampling, data, safety, consent and the researcher's own position.
Geography · Grade 12
Most of a geographer's time goes into getting data ready. Learners judge datasets against quality dimensions and metadata, clean records and join tables with stable keys (and find out why joins fail), turn counts into rates, densities and percentages, and classify data for maps with equal intervals, quantiles and natural breaks — seeing how each choice changes the story a map tells.
Geography · Grade 12
Wealth, services and resources are spread unevenly across the world and within every country. Learners measure inequality with Lorenz curves, the Gini coefficient and regional ratios; explain uneven development with core–periphery and cumulative causation models; weigh the 'resource curse' against cases where resource wealth has supported development; and analyse unequal access to water and energy with Sustainable Development Goal indicators and water-stress calculations.
Geography · Grade 12
Planners must make long-lived decisions about coasts, rivers and cities under an uncertain climate. Learners read climate projections as ranges across scenarios and identify sources of uncertainty, estimate how sea-level rise changes flood frequency and exposure, compare adaptation options — protect, accommodate, retreat, ecosystem-based measures and adaptive pathways — while watching for maladaptation, and combine cost–benefit reasoning with discounting and equity to judge a regional plan.
Geography · Grade 12
Goods, people and money move through networks with hubs, corridors and chokepoints. Learners measure hub importance with degree and betweenness centrality, explain the geography of container shipping and air hubs, analyse disruptions such as the March 2021 Suez Canal blockage and later rerouting around Africa, and examine migration corridors and remittances, including their costs and the dependence of some economies on them.
Geography · Grade 12
Spatial models predict where people will shop, travel or seek services, and where facilities should go. Learners apply spatial interaction models (the gravity model, Reilly's breaking point and the Huff model) and explain distance decay, solve small location–allocation problems, validate models against observed data with residuals and error measures, and critique the assumptions, uncertainty and ethics of using models to make decisions.
Geography · Grade 12
A map only works if its audience can read it and trust it. Learners build clear visual hierarchy with message-led titles, legends and sources; choose sequential, diverging or qualitative colour schemes that people with colour-vision deficiency can read; write alt text and non-visual equivalents and show uncertainty honestly; and represent disputed borders, contested names, projections and classifications responsibly.
Geography · Grade 12
In this capstone, learners advise the fictional, fast-growing city of Ardena in a drying basin on how to secure its water supply to 2040. They analyse the decision context with demand projections and a stakeholder map, compare a new dam, a desalination plant and a demand-management package using weighted multi-criteria analysis and sensitivity tests, weigh environmental, social and climate impacts with lessons from real cities, and write a conditional, evidence-based recommendation with monitoring indicators.
