Texas TEKS 7.9.A
The Standard
identify ways in which Texans have adapted to and modified the environment and explain the positive and negative consequences of the modifications
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students distinguish adapting to Texas environments from changing them. They identify examples such as irrigation, dams, oil drilling, and urban growth, then explain specific benefits and costs of each modification.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can classify a Texas example as adaptation, modification, or both and support the choice with evidence. The student can connect each modification to at least one positive and one negative consequence.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may call every human response a modification, even when people adjust their behavior without changing the environment. They may list only benefits or give vague effects that are not linked to a specific action.
How to Assess It
- Give students this prompt: “A Texas town builds a dam to store water. Identify the modification, one positive consequence, and one negative consequence.”
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups Texas map tiles and impact cards, then have them place dams, farms, cities, and oil fields and match likely consequences.
Ask students to write: Should West Texas farmers expand irrigation if it lowers aquifer levels? Defend a claim with one benefit and one cost.
Play Adapt or Modify: read Texas scenarios, and teams hold up category cards before explaining the environmental effect.
Compare past and current satellite images of a local area, then identify one human change, one benefit, and one environmental cost.
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Printable 7.9.A Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 7.9.A, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- 4.8.C
compare the positive and negative consequences of human modification of the environment in Texas, past and present.
- 4.8.B
explain reasons why people have adapted to and modified their environment in Texas, past and present, such as the use of natural resources to meet basic needs, ...
- 2.5.B
identify consequences of human modification of the physical environment; and
- 4.8.A
describe ways people have adapted to and modified their environment in Texas, past and present, such as timber clearing, agricultural production, wetlands drain...
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