TeachersFirst's US Census Resources

2010 Census: It's About Us 2010 Census in Schools Grade K to 12 - Scholastic- permalink -

Help your students learn what the census is and why it's important. This site includes lessons and maps for students in all grades. Thematic units focus on history of the census for using and collecting data. There is information on all territories of the United States (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, etc..). There are links for teachers, parents, and administrators. And the Family Take Home Pages are available in 27 languages!
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In the Classroom: Take advantage of the numerous lesson plans, maps, and other ideas this site offers. Don't forget to check out the diversity lessons and ideas. Have students individually check out the two interactives focusing on geography and history. Encourage parents to check out the section entitled Families. You may consider providing this link on your class website.

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Census in Schools Grade K to 12 - US Census Bureau- permalink -

The US Census Bureau site provides a collection of materials, lessons, and information designed to teach the nation's students about the importance of the census and focusing on encouraging students to help ensure every child and every household member is counted in 2010. The site includes a copy of the census form, dozens of lesson plans/ideas for various grade levels and subjects, and a few simple interactive activities for both kids and teens.
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In the Classroom: Because of the volume of materials and activities, introduce this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Then have students explore this site independently or in small groups to put together a Public Service Announcement on participating in the Census 2010. Have students create video advertisements or infomercials. Share the videos using a tool such as Teachers.TV reviewed here. Try using the historical census data or the predicted population data for math projects related to statistics.

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100 People Grade 6 to 12 - 100 People Foundation and VIF- permalink -

This site takes the global population (there are 6.7 billion of us) and simplifies it to 100 People to help students understand what kind of people make up their community and the world beyond. On the first page of the website you will see a lesson plan video to view. There are 12 other videos for you to use.

There are two lesson plans for this site. The first one, ”World Portrait” is where students survey and select 100 people to represent their community and the world’s population. There are also suggestions for how a class might select one person. The plan is download-able and has ideas that include criteria for the people who are nominated, discussion topics and activities, questions for the community profile, a questionnaire for the people nominated, an image release form, just to name a few. Student results are to be captured in film, photography, music and text. The other lesson plan on this site is titled “100 People Under the Sun.” In order to download this lesson you must register, it is free, but you will have to log in when viewing the plan. With this lesson “...students will develop key leadership skills to help raise their community's awareness of its energy use, as well as its motivation to advance sustainable approaches."
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In the Classroom: This project is the perfect opportunity to collaborate with others in your building! Math students could complete a school and community survey (which could tie in with 2010 U.S. census). Social Studies students could interpret data collected in the survey (also could be tied into the 2010 census) and extrapolate parameters for nominations. Language Arts students would finalize the nominations and develop the essays. Technology, yearbook, and art classes can draw the portraits or produce them digitally, create a video for submission to 100 People project, and your more advanced technology students can create a website for content display. Glogster EDU, reviewed here or a wiki would be great tools to use for the website! Not familiar with wikis? Check out the Teacher’s First Wiki Walk-Through reviewed here. Of course, you don't have to collaborate with others. This unit would work well in any world culture class at any level, or even in language arts when studying multicultural literature and settings. Here's another idea: Many of us have seen the video "Did You Know? Predicting Future Statistics." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7FP1kgtD8U). The beginning states "If you are one in a million in China there are 1,300 people just like you.” But it also gives statistics like "During the course of this presentation 60 babies will be born in the U.S., 244 babies will be born in China, and 351 babies will be born in India..." You can use your and your student’s ideas to come up with your own statistics. Something like how many people will be working and sleeping between the hours of midnight and 6:00 A.M. in the U.S., China, and India (or any other country you wish to include). Use this to lead to discussions of time zones and all sorts of other peripheral ideas and decisions students will have to think about.

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Let's Be Counted Grade 2 to 12 - Steven J. Logwood- permalink -

Wow! What a creative way to introduce a census unit, or to just make your students aware of the importance of the census. This is a four minute video, "Music-Based Messaging Prototype encouraging young Hispanics and African Americans to participate in the census." It is a YouTube video with a catchy tune and photos of every ethnic group one can think of. The information in the song is also printed on the screen. The video is available in Spanish and English. As they say in their pitch: “It’s fun, motivating, digital, downloadable, overcomes literacy issues, and is environmentally friendly.” After viewing the video, scroll down the screen and you'll find the time line for the music and facts presented in the video. Keep scrolling and you'll find the number of iterations for certain message phrases, and information about other applications and services. If YouTube is blocked in your school, you CAN download the videos at home and bring them in “on a stick” using a tool such as Vixy, reviewed here.
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In the Classroom: Share this video and song on your projector and screen, or whiteboard, as students come into the classroom. Use it as a lead-in to a discussion about the importance of the census. You can post some of the information from Scholastic's “Census in Schools” reviewed here. From this same site you can go to “It’s About Us,” and find a "Reference Page" with "Census Facts" that you can use in elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms. One last suggestion: Once you’ve completed your census unit, discussion, etc. You might want to have your class participate in the “100 People: A World Portrait” reviewed here. Don't forget about the possibility of using the census in math class to understand data and graphing, as well.

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Census in Schools Grade K to 12 - Scholastic and U.S. Census Bureau- permalink -

This census site is huge! It will help you teach your students what they count and why! Developed by Scholastic, this site is for grades K-12. "Census in Schools" has so many resources they can't all be given justice here. There are four tabs at the top for teachers, kids, teens, and materials. There are other tabs that have word games, memory games, and quizzes. There are a plethora of links to other sources on each page.

While exploring, our reviewer visited the “Teacher” tab and clicked on "lesson plans" and found lesson for mapping, the history of the census, and relating the census to the student's classroom. There were two sets of lessons here for K-2 and 3-4. Standards/benchmarks for language arts, math, social studies, and geography for K-2 and 3-4 were included. There were worksheets to download for both levels, a story to read, “Who Counts,” with comprehension questions to answer, and mapping activities. The site also had links for additional resources and a letter for the parents about the unit....and that was only ONE link on the "Teacher" tab. Whew! The rest of the site is just as thoroughly and professionally done as the lessons for K-4 lessons.
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In the Classroom: The K-4 lessons are perfect to use the way they are, or you might want to do some comparing of information between the different grade levels within your school. Another idea is to pair up third and fourth graders with the kindergartners or first and second graders to read the story and work on the worksheets together. Of course, using your projector and interactive whiteboard with the whole class is a must for explanations of the lessons. This site is very colorful, so project what you can! You may want to introduce this unit with a catchy, educational song and video about the census reviewed here. For teachers of older students there are "Lessons Using the 2000 Census Data," "Quick Facts," and much more. One last suggestion: Once you’ve completed your census unit, discussion, etc. You might want to have your class participate in the “100 People: A World Portrait” project reviewed here.

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Job Voyager Grade 8 to 12 - ipums.org- permalink -

This interactive graph (created with information from the 2000 U.S. Census) shows all jobs and the percentages of people who worked them from 1850-2000. Students can scroll up over any given year to see any job and the percentage of Americans working that job during that year (gender indicated). A few do have “missing data,” but most are complete. By clicking on the job, a new screen appears which shows the percentage of workers but divides the workers into male and female (pink and blue traditional colors help to differentiate between the genders). The site reflects the growing number of female workers, the loss of agrarian occupations, and the changing fields of importance, to name a few trends. Besides viewing the breakdown of male and female employees, you can also select one field and analyze its place in society today and during any given year. Occupations range from teachers to salesman to farmer to clerical worker and countless others. You can also search by letter and all the occupations beginning with that letter will come up graphed by percentages across the span of years.
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In the Classroom: This is a great find for the interactive whiteboard or projector. Share this site with career counseling staff, as well. Use this site when studying U.S. history and economics. Compare the role in society of various occupations (such as a farm laborer) from the 1850s to 2000. Have students hypothesize about why the changes occurred and predict what might show in census data in 2010 and beyond. Use this when teaching graph reading and graph creation, as well. As with any data on the Internet, you will want to challenge students on how they know whether this data set is reliable -- what is the source?

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iCity Data Grade 3 to 12 - iCityData- permalink -

Looking for information on cities or want to make comparisons between different cities? Use iCityData to find information such as "Average Family Size," "Mean travel time to work," and many other categories. Choose "City Search" above the search box to find information about a specific city. To make comparisons, choose "Compare cities" to compare up to three cities located by city, state, zip code, or area code. Being specific with the information yields a better search. Advertisements are included on the "clarify choices” page. Students should be cautioned to ignore these. Of course, the data used is only as current as the recent census. See the notes at the bottom for the source of data.
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In the Classroom: Use this website for any curricular area, especially science and social studies. Students can create stories set in different locations or write blog posts about issues people face. Use data about your community and others for practice with creating graphs to compare information visually. Have groups investigate different places and create a class geography wiki about specific topics such as the impact of natural resources on the local economy. Compare your own community to others in other states as you learn the basics of community government and citizenship. Not comfortable with wikis? Check out the Teacher’s First Wiki Walk-Through reviewed here. Use this site to research quality of life today compared to in the past. View different locations to determine common problems and reasons for these. Look at population statistics to show percent growth and resulting issues from changes in populations. Research background information on environmental issues in each of the locations and use data from this site to make connections to those issues.

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The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War Grade 6 to 12 - Edward L. Ayers- permalink -

This site is a digital archive of documents related to people from two communities during the American Civil War: Augusta County, Virginia in the South and Franklin County, Pennsylvania in the North. The archive is roughly divided into three sections: pre-war, during the war, and post-war. Within each section are subsections devoted to census information, newspapers, letters and diaries, church records, maps and images. The archive allows the user to examine the lives of real people living on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line during one of the most pivotal times in U.S. history. Another section of this site presents specific lesson plans that use the archives, a list of possible research paper topics that draw on the information and the specific case of a teacher who used these archives to help prepare students for the DBA (Document-Based Analysis) sections of the Advanced Placement History exams.
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In the Classroom: The site is a gold mine of information, and would be useful to either students doing in-depth research, or for teachers who want to highlight the specific contrasts between communities from the North and the South during the Civil War. Teachers who wish to differentiate instruction will find paper topics which could be assigned to students who want to extend the lesson. Additionally, paper topics give options for creative essays, traditional essays or research papers, which can be adapted to different learning styles. Why not have students create a fictitious ongoing wiki between folks living on either side of the “line.” What might they say to one another? Not sure what a wiki is? Check out the TeacherFirst Wiki Walk-Through (reviewed here).

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Black History Month - February Grade 3 to 12 - AFT- permalink -

This collection of resources includes readings about several pertinent black history topics, books recommended for children to read about the topic (Civil Rights, Segregated schools, Leaders, Little Rock, Brown v. Board of Education, and others), and links to lesson planning websites for parts of each topic. Important facts about African Americans from the Census Bureau and featured pages about many African American leaders complement the offerings on this easy to use site.
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In the Classroom: Find any topic you need quickly for Black History Month. The teacher information includes lesson ideas and book suggestions about many pertinent topics. Have students work with a partner to explore one of the topics highlighted at this site. Have the groups create a blog written by African American students who lived through a certain period in American history. How did they feel? Who were their heroes? Another question to discuss with students: How does this data illustrate the usefulness of the U.S. census every ten years?

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Census in Schools Grade 4 to 10 - U.S. Census Bureau- permalink -

This site, created especially for students who need to understand information collected during the census (up to, and including the year 2000), offers five main areas: State Facts for Students, Program Overview, Teaching Materials (K-adult), Reference Materials, and Highlights. The state pages include a generalized lesson plan and pertinent information for each state. The City map section under reference materials is especially interesting as it shows city growth from 1790 to 2000. The teaching materials section includes activities and downloadable, printable census kits for classroom use from kindergarten students to adults.
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In the Classroom: This historical census data is ideal for comparison with other, more recent years or for students to make predictions for an upcoming census based on past trends. Use this page when studying various states; students can make a quick comparison between targeted states with the facts ready to read all on one or two pages. If you teach data analysis and graphing in your math class, this data provides real world information for students to use in math exercises, spreadsheets, and graphs. You could even use it in Google Docs spreadsheets (reviewed here). If you have ESL and ELL students, check out the special ESL pages found under the teaching materials section. The easy to read materials include glossaries, exercises, and excellent maps, perfect for geography lessons.

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ZIPskinny Grade 6 to 12 - ZIPskinny- permalink -

A useful little site for research or idle curiosity, this site offers some basic demographic data about the communities that make up each U.S. ZIP code. The ZIP code, first developed in 1963 to assist the U.S. Postal Service with automated mail delivery, has become a powerful demographic symbol and is frequently used by researchers to compare U.S. communities. This site, which ties its data to information gathered in the 2000 census, offers no commentary--just the facts ma'am--and includes statistics on education, income, population, race, gender, and marital status. There is a utility for comparing any ZIP code with up to 20 other ZIP codes. Students may be interested in the specific data provided for each public school within a given ZIP code. Our reviewers did notice that some ZIP codes are not included at this time. Serious researchers are cautioned, the data comes from the 2000 census, and may be outdated. This historical census data may provide a good comparison with other, more recent years or for students to make predictions for an upcoming census based on past trends. There is a lot of advertising on the site, although the majority of it is in the form of text links rather than annoying pictures or dancing silhouettes.
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In the Classroom: Teachers or students seeking some basic demographic data about their own town or city, or wishing to compare it with another location, will find this site useful. Civics, government, or economics lessons could be enriched with local data which might be compared to the more general information offered by textbooks in answer to the question "How do we compare to this?" Math teachers and reading teachers who teach graphical data analysis might get some mileage out of using the graphs and tables from their own towns or communities for computations rather than using generic information from a textbook. Project the graphs on a whiteboard and have students manipulate to explain the meaning of changes in the visuals. Think of the higher level thinking questions you could generate during a political year! Of course, the terminally curious can probably waste a good hour or two just noodling with the data.

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Facts for Features: Thanksgiving Day 2002 Grade 3 to 12 - U.S. Census Bureau- permalink -

The Census Bureau offers lots of Thanksgiving statistics, from the total weight of all the turkeys raised in the US to the total amount of food consumed on Thanksgiving. You can plan a huge party with this one!
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In the Classroom: Choose a statistic your students can estimate then use this site to help develop estimation and number sense--all in a holiday spirit. Gobble, Gobble! An interesting question to ask: what other data would you like to learn from the U.S. census the next time they do one?

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American Women Through Time Grade 8 to 12 - Ken Middleton- permalink -

Learn about specific time periods in America's past through the lens of women's history. This site provides a chronology of women's contributions in the United States from the nation's infancy through the twentieth century. Students can "read more about it" by following links to relevant web sites for each event, or explore helpful research sources (census data, newspapers, diaries, etc.) for each specified area.
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In the Classroom: This is an excellent resource for piecing together American history by examining primary source documents. Have cooperative learning groups investigate women's contributions in various decades and create a video. Share the videos using a site such as SchoolTube reviewed here.

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Kids' Corner Grade 3 to 6 - US Census Bureau- permalink -

This practical research tool provides useful, kid-friendly information about each of the fifty states. Students can learn about the census, discover state-related facts, and test their knowledge with some challenging quiz questions. An interactive map serves as an easy navigational tool to reveal state-by-state information including total population, urban and rural residences, school enrollment, and languages spoken.
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In the Classroom: Use this site during state research. Compare various states and have cooperative learning groups create two circle Venn Diagrams comparing two specific states using a site such as Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram (reviewed here).

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CensusScope Grade 6 to 12 - - permalink -

Created by a university consortium, this site offers a wealth of graphs, charts, and data that students can use to analyze America’s demographics. There are a number of prefabricated analyses available, and there is also enough data to create exercises or activities that let students explore on their own. There are a number of possibilities for social studies, math, or statistics in this one.
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In the Classroom: Share these visuals on your projector or interactive whiteboard. Have students investigate one area of this data and contribute to a class wiki. Not comfortable with wikis? Have no wiki worries – check out the Teacher’s First Wiki Walk-Through reviewed here.

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2000 Census Data On-line Grade K to 12 - US Government- permalink -

This provides the 2000 U.S. census information. There are links to news, data tools, a message from the President (Obama, at the time of this review), employment information, fact sheets, and more. General categories include "People & Households," "Business & Industry," "Geography," "Newsroom," and "Special Topics." Each category has several topics. This historical census data is ideal for comparison with other, more recent years or for students to make predictions for an upcoming census based on past trends.
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In the Classroom: This data would be great material for a US government or history class. Teachers can find all sorts of demograhic information for use during lessons on the political make-up of the country as well as representative numbers, migration trends, etc. There is a LOT here so be sure to give yourself time to search through it all for what you need. Have students use this site to research specific topics and create multimedia projects with a partner. Have cooperative learning groups create online books using a tool such as Bookemon, reviewed here. Challenge groups to create online posters on paper or do it together as a class using a tool such as Project Poster (reviewed here) or PicLits (reviewed here).

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Statistical Abstract of the United States Grade 6 to 12 - US Government- permalink -

The government's concise presentation of statistical information on hundreds of aspects of life in the United States. Although this site only goes up to 2000 (at the time of this review), it could be very useful in comparing historical data. Make sure to reference back for new stats after the 2010 census is done!
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In the Classroom: Use this site as a point of reference for any and all statistical information about the US population. Teachers can use this to find voter and state information, which would be useful in a discussion about apportion of state delegates in the House of Representatives.

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American Fact Finder Grade 5 to 12 - The U.S. Census Department- permalink -

The U.S. Census Department offers this site which provides a wide variety of statistical and factual information on American population, economics, education, and other statistics. There is a popluation finder, fact sheet, links for people, business and government, and housing, and data sets (with details). There is even a link to Kids' Corner with lots of information for younger students to understand. It's a great research tool, especially if you know what you're looking for. Parts of this site are updated through the present, while others date back to 2000.
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In the Classroom: Be sure to click on the Kids' Corner menu button for student specific activities. Also be sure to include this site on your teacher web page for students to access both in and outside of class for further research. While students are learning about various states throughout the United States, have cooperative learning groups use this tool to compare and learn more about states throughout the Nation.

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Census Quick Facts Grade 3 to 12 - US Government- permalink -

This easy to use site contains population and demographic information for any state or county in the nation. The data available includes population, ethnic composition, and other related information. There is also a link for younger students with basic information on a more elementary level. At the time of this review, the data provided was from 2008.
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In the Classroom: Use this site as the starting point for individual or group projects. Have pairs of students create multimedia presentations about specific states or counties. Have students use a mapping tool such as Mapskip (reviewed here) to create a map of the locations they have researched (with audio stories and pictures included)!

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