History

Lesson Plans

High School Lesson Plans

For both the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the U.S. Census Bureau, in cooperation with Scholastic, Inc., created census-related lesson plans for teachers of students in Kindergarten through 12th grade. The 2010 Census lesson plans are available on the Statistics in Schools website.

In addition to the lesson plans developed by the Census Bureau, other organizations have developed teaching aids that use census data to teach subjects like math, geography, and history. Links to some of these lessons can be found below.

This lesson will help students understand key concepts of human migration through the examination of maps and census data. They will then research and document the impact of migration on a region's cultural landscape. Students will examine migration patterns on a global and national scale as a class, and then apply that understanding to a migration story about their own community.

In the decades before the Civil War, a significant number of inventions and innovations appeared, transforming American life. Also of great consequence was the development of the American system of manufactures. This system, in which individual workers were responsible for only part of a finished product, helped make store-bought goods more affordable. As a result, people began to buy goods from stores rather than making them and the American consumer was born. This lesson provides students with the opportunity to form, revise, and research questions for an investigation of the First Industrial Revolution, using resources available on linked websites.

Official documents, census data, newspaper articles, and photographs from this time period in Puerto Rico's history shed light on the complicated roles women have played in Puerto Rican society. This lesson provides students the opportunity to evaluate the role of women in the workforce and the global economy using a variety of sources.

Middles School Lesson Plans

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers were forced to compromise on two major issues concerning how to determine representation in the new nation. Students will understand why there was tension between states with large and small populations and how slavery played a roll in the Constitutional Convention.

Students will read excerpts from a letter George Washington wrote about agriculture in the United Sates in 1771 and compare his evaluation with agricultural data over time.

In this lesson, students will learn that the U.S. Census Bureau counts the population of the United States in a formal way once every 10 years. Students will look at a 50-year span of census figures to see trends within a city and across cities, and compare populations in cities across a period of time using graphs.

Elementary Lesson Plans

This lesson will acquaint students with Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, which calls for an enumeration of the population every ten years. Students will explore the reasons for the census and participate in a variety of activities designed to involve them in the census process. This lesson is multidisciplinary involving math, art, language arts, and social studies skills.

Many people believe that Native Americans are a vanished peoples; that they do not exist in the present day.

Using this lesson plan, teachers can use photo essays and other texts to introduce students to Native children and their families, thereby countering the idea that Native Americans no longer exist.