Overview of Lesson		Secondary Questions
Connection to the Curriculum,Standards and Skills		Materials
Grade Level		Body of Lesson - Procedure & Assessment
Purpose of Lesson		Activity One
Primary Geographic Question		Assessment of Lesson

Overview of the Lesson

Because population density affects our daily lives, it is important for students to be able to interpret data for both maps and surveys so as citizens, they have an understanding of how changes in patterns may affect people.  By collecting and mapping data concerning the school's population, students will learn how to create thematic maps and be able to use the maps to hypothesize what future changes might occur and how this will affect them and their families.

Geography Standards

Standard 1:  How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.

Standard 3:  How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on earth's surface.

Standard 9:  The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on Earth's surface.

Standard 12:  The processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement.

Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies Standards

Standard 2:  Illustrate spatial information using data, symbols, and colors to create thematic maps.

Standard 6:  Identify physical and human criteria used to define regions at different spatial scales.

Standard 15:  Describe human populations on Earth's surface.

Geographic Skills

How to make and use maps, globes, graphs, charts, models, and databases to analyze spatial distributions and patterns.  How to use the elements of space to describe spatial patterns.

Grade 7

Students will collect data from different grade levels at their school and develop thematic maps which show population density and to determine how this might affect the school and themselves in the future.

Where do the majority of the students live and how might this have an affect on the future of the school?

What affect might a change in the schools' population have on how the school is organized?

What affect might it have on the services that are offered to students?

• Map of School Area

Activity One

• Divide students in groups as follows: survey information, data processing, graphic organizers, maps production.
• With student input, develop a rubric for evaluation based on the final product and the steps involved in getting to that product.
• Have students decide on survey questions their groups want answered.
• Have class come to a consensus on five survey questions.
• Have students type survey and distribute it to other classes.
• Have students groups tabulate the information collected.
• Have students graph information and come to decision about how it will be recorded on the maps the teacher supplies of the school area.
• Have students begin to place information on maps.
• Have students share additional questions they have after looking at the information on the thematic maps they created.
• Now have students draw conclusions about what could happen to the school in the future if there was a dramatic change in the school population.

The evaluation of this project will be based on the work of each group in completing their part of the project on time, in a neat fashion, and the overall contribution that each group plays in developing the information, gathering the data, and completing the thematic map that is assigned to them.