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Overview:
This lesson introduces or reviews the locations of the most populous cities in your state, province, or country. It also introduces population distributions.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, math, social studies
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 9: "The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on Earth's surface"
Time:
Three to four hours
Materials Required:
- Map of your state, province, or country from the Xpeditions atlas or another atlas
- Several rolls of masking tape
- Index cards
- Stackable objects such as blocks or similarly sized books
- Data on city populations in your state, province, or country
Objectives:
Students will
- become familiar with the location and some of the other characteristics of the ten most populous cities in their state, province, or country.
Geographic Skills:
Acquiring Geographic Information
Organizing Geographic Information
Answering Geographic Questions
Analyzing Geographic Information
S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e
Opening:
Ask students to use maps of your state, province, or country to locate major cities. Review the symbols used on the map.
List cities located by students on a blackboard or overhead transparency. Do students recognize all of the names? Have they visited any of them? Are they large cities or small towns? Are they nearby or far away?
As a class, review sources of population information (such as census reports) to identify the ten most populous cities in your state, province, or country. Write the name of each city on a card.
Development:
Divide your class into ten student groups. Let someone from each group draw one of the cards so that each group is assigned a city. Give members of each group an hour or two to research information about the city—when it was founded and why, how it has grown, what the terrain near the city is like, what its climate is like, and so on.
Clear chairs and desks from the center of your classroom.
Using maps from the Xpeditions atlas as a reference, have your students work together using masking tape to create a large map of your state, province, or country on the floor of the room. Remember to establish a scale and a north arrow at the outset.
Have each group mark the location of its city on the map. Standing together near that location, have the students describe the terrain and the other characteristics of their city.
Using one book or block for a given number of people, have the groups stack objects on their city markers to indicate each city's population. When the class is finished, tell them they have made a three-dimensional bar graph of population.
Closing:
Ask students to locate your community on the map and see how its population compares to those of cities nearby. Then take a photograph of the map and your students for the school bulletin board or newspaper!
Suggested Student Assessment:
Have students consider this scenario: The manager of a circus plans to travel to your state, province, or country and wants to have the circus perform for as many people as possible. But they can only perform in three cities. Where do you suggest the circus should perform? (Students should consider each city's population, but should also consider factors such as whether the largest city is near other cities and whether several large cities are clustered together.)
Kay McGough of St. Mary's School in Edgerton, Ohio, contributed classroom ideas for Standard 9. Related Links:
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