COUNT ON US: CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS OF DEMOGRAPHY
Part II: U.S. Population Trends: Past, Present, Future
This section will use U.S. Census data to highlight three significant trends in U.S. population:
- The shift of population to the South and West.
- The growth of minority populations.
- The increasing size of older age groups.
- Social Studies terms and concepts include:
- center of population
- immigration
- in-migration
- urbanization
- Math terms and concepts include:
- mean
- median
- range
- graphing calculators
- Language Arts terms and concepts include:
- Journalism
- inverted pyramid news story structure
- leads
- headlines
- news vs. editorial writing
- Building Web skills:
- During this section, Social Studies and Math classes will continue to post relevant questions to be answered, on a rotating basis, by members of the class.
- At the end of this section, student teams will participate in a Demographic Treasure Hunt using sites they have recorded in the "bookmarks" page of their notebook.
- Size and Centers of U.S. Population
- Activities:
- Lesson, "Lights, Camera, Action," tracing the center of population in the U.S. 1790-1980 using U.S. Census Bureau.
- Map activity: identify and locate largest U.S. cities in different time periods
- Using graphing calculators, observe and predict change in regional population distribution
- Web Sites:
- Statistical Abstract of the United States, rankings
- Statistical Abstract of the United States, population 1993 and 2000
- Statistical Abstract of the United States, U.S. Statistics in Brief
- U.S. Census Bureau Home Page
- Statistical Abstract Home Page
- Racial and Ethnic Composition
- Activities:
- Choropleth Mapping: Increase in Hispanic and Asian population, 1970-1990
- Compare Census Bureau press releases (from WWW) to actual newspaper reports; construct inverted pyramid news stories from other Census Bureau press releases
- Using graphing calculators, observe and predict change in racial and ethnic composition.
- Web Sites (see above)
- Age Distribution
- Activities:
- Construct & compare population pyramids, 1950, 70, 90 to show "Baby Boomers" cohort
- Using graphing calculators, observe and predict change in age distribution.
- Web Sites (see above)