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Overview:
The idea for this lesson plan was inspired by Marie Loiselle of the Maharishi School in Fairfield, Iowa, who received a teacher grant from the
National Geographic Education Foundation in support of a project called Geographic Learning and City Growth.
Since the dawn of human evolution, humans have migrated across continents in search of food, shelter, safety, and hospitable weather. People still move for these reasons, but new reasons for human migration are arising, such as job relocation and overpopulation.
This lesson will review the reasons humans move around the planet. It will focus on both internal (to the U.S.) and international migrations. Students will form small groups and research one example of migration in depth.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, demography, history
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 1: "How to use maps and other geographical representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report, information from a spatial perspective"
Standard 9: "The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human population on Earth's surface"
Standard 12: "The processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement"
Standard 16: "The changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources"
Standard 18: "How to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future"
Time:
Two to three hours
Materials Required:
- Computers with Internet access
- Wall map of the world
- Large piece of paper or poster board
- Blank Xpeditions outline maps of the world, one for each small group
- Drawing and writing materials
Objectives:
Students will
- use a world map to think about their own potential migration and the reasons behind that decision;
- answer and discuss questions about human mobility using figures and graphs;
- explain migration in terms of push and pull factors;
- relate migration patterns to economic, political, social, and environmental factors; and
- create a map of a past or present human migration.
Geographic Skills:
Asking Geographic Questions
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 look at a world map and think about two places they would like to move to after graduation from high school or college. Have them create a list of reasons why they think they would like to move there. Then discuss why they chose these locations. What would be the downside of moving?
Ask students how they define migration, and keep track of their answers on a large piece of paper or poster board.
Development:
Have students look at a map of world population density at National Geographic's MapMachine. What are their impressions of how the world's population is spread out?
Why do people move? Ask students to think about the forces that drive human migration. Have students look at this overview of the human migration and explore the "push" and "pull" factors involved. What are some examples of things that push or pull people away from their homeland? Ask students to think about real world examples of some of these situations. The examples should cover historical (e.g., Africans brought to America for slavery) and current (e.g., the Kurds in Iraq) examples, as well as situations that illustrate both voluntary (e.g., moving to another city because of a job transfer) and forced (e.g., displacement by a natural disaster) migration.
Have students read the following articles published by the U.S. Census Bureau:
Geographical Mobility: Population Characteristics March 1999 to March 2000
Why People Move: Exploring the March 2000 Current Population Survey
[Note: These documents are available only in PDF format, so you may want to download them before class and pass them out to students. If you cannot print PDFs for some reason, point students to the related links at the bottom of this page and ask them to research more general answers to the questions below.]
Ask students to form small groups and discuss the following questions:
- What are the different types of human movements described in the articles?
- What is the most common type of human movement?
- Which age groups move the most? Why do students think this is the case?
- What types of people—by race, ethnic group, income, and education level—show the highest rate of migration? Why do students think this is the case?
- Why do students think the United States has a distinct pattern of regional movements? Discuss migration trends in terms of each region's economy, climate, politics, and connection to international communities.
Closing:
Have students return to their discussion about where they think they would like to move someday. Have they changed their minds since the beginning of this lesson? How would they feel if they were forced to move somewhere, even if it were somewhere they thought they might want to live? How have their ideas of migration changed since they first defined it in the opening?
Suggested Student Assessment:
In their small groups, have students select a migration in history to study further. Ask them to conduct research to answer the following questions:
- When did the migration occur?
- From where to where did the migration occur? Give each group a blank Xpeditions outline map of the world where they can illustrate the migration. (Other Xpeditions atlas maps may also be helpful; students can click on the continent or country they are studying to show movement in a more detailed way.)
- What were the characteristics of the people who migrated (e.g., race, gender, and religion)?
- Why did the group migrate? Was it a forced or voluntary migration?
- Did the group face difficulties adjusting to their new environment? What were they? Did they resolve them? How?
- Did the migrants stay in their new land or return home? Why or why not?
These Web sites will help students begin their research:
Population Reference Bureau
United Nations Population Division: Department of Economic and Social Affairs
University of California, Davis: Migration Dialogue
US Census Bureau
US Census Bureau's State Data Center Program (includes county-level data)
Ask students in each small group to present what they have learned to the rest of the class.
Extending the Lesson:
- Have students create an imaginary immigrant character living somewhere in the world today. Ask them to write a series of journal entries describing their family background, reasons for leaving their home, journey to a new place and their experiences upon arrival.
- Have students investigate their own family history and develop an "immigrant family tree" or map tracing their ancestors and their travels to other countries or areas of the country. Students should include the motivations that caused the movement of family members. This information could be gathered by interviewing or looking at old letters, diaries or journals of family members.
- Ask students to interview a person who migrated in one form or another (e.g., emigrated from another country, moved from another state, or moved from a rural area to an urban area or vise versa). Have them develop a series of questions to gather background information on the subject as well as push/pull factors that motivated the person to move to America, and create a written report or oral presentation with the results.
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