Texas TEKS 3.3.B
The Standard
identify and compare how people in different communities adapt to or modify the physical environment in which they live such as deserts, mountains, wetlands, and plains
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students explain how local land, water, and climate affect where and how people live. They compare ways communities adjust their behavior with ways they change their surroundings.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can compare two communities using specific examples, such as raised houses in wetlands and irrigation in deserts. They can label each example as adapting to the environment or modifying it and explain why.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may confuse adapting with modifying, or assume every human action changes the environment. They may also think one solution, such as air conditioning, works equally well in every region.
How to Assess It
- Give students pictures of a desert canal and a wetland house on stilts. Ask them to identify each response, label it adaptation or modification, and compare the reasons for it.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Build desert, mountain, wetland, and plains models in trays, then add craft materials showing homes, roads, farms, or water systems.
Ask students to write which environment would be hardest to live in and name two changes people might make.
Play a sorting game with picture cards, matching community choices to environments and labeling each choice as adaptation or modification.
Compare local homes, roads, drainage systems, or farms with those in another Texas region using maps and photographs.
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Printable 3.3.B Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 3.3.B, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- 6.5.B
identify and analyze ways people have adapted to the physical environment in various places and regions
- 3.3
Geography. The student understands how humans adapt to and/or modify the physical environment. The student is expected to:
- 4.8
Geography. The student understands how people adapt to and modify their environment. The student is expected to:
- 5.8
Geography. The student understands how people adapt to and modify their environment. The student is expected to:
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