Population Growth Globalization Natural Resources Unit for Global Issues

Explore everything from increasingly concerning world population growth and decline, the recent rise of economic and cultural globalization, and ever-growing eco footprints and consumption of natural resources with this eye-opening unit.

This unit is part of a thematic, inquiry-centered curriculum, Global Issues, a semester-long course that blends Current Events, Human Geography, and Environmental Science.

This curriculum is intended to meet the requirements of a Current Issues or Contemporary World Problems course.

Human or World Geography Teachers! These stand-alone versions dive a little deeper and are meant to integrate into your existing course

• Population Growth unit
• Globalization unit

Unit At A Glance

• 14 Activities, 2 Projects, & End-of-Unit Essay
• “I Can” Standards Checklist & Skill Handouts
• Detailed Daily Lesson Plans, Answer Keys & Rubrics
• Instructional Slide Deck
• Printable PDF & editable Google files of every activity

To get a closer look >> scroll up and click View Preview above; also download this FREE Unit Overview.

Greatness is harnessing the connectivity of today’s world to tackle our common problems.

Few teenagers know the world beyond their own surroundings and many have no idea how their lifestyle, choices, and hopes are part of a global story. Yet at the same time, also know how capable they are to help solve the urgent problems industrialization and globalization have created.

Guide your students through a wide variety of sources (from documentaries and maps to simulations and news articles) as they grapple with the not-so-simple question: “Is today’s world getting smaller or larger from all these changes?”

Set each of your students up for success in this high-interest, multi-faceted inquiry unit, regardless of ability, with highly scaffolded graphic organizers, skill sheets, powerful projects, and supplemental resources included at each step of the way.

Empower your students to become globally-aware citizens in this 5-6 week unit!

Activities are interchangeable to customize your own unit- mix and match depending on time constraints, student ability, or personal interests.

Included in this complete thematic, inquiry-driven unit:

Overview Materials

• Teacher Unit Overview with general notes, links, standards, and a pacing guide
• Daily Lesson Plans with step-by-step details, planning, and lesson takeaways
• Detailed Answer Keys for each activity
• 100-slide Instructional support slide deck (PPT & Slides) to assist in daily lessons with student questions, images, step-by-step essay outlining support, etc.
• Student Unit Review handouts with review questions and "I Can..." checklists
• Student Unit Notes sheet for building deep and nuanced mastery of concepts
• Student Skill sheets including Annotating a Text, Analyzing News Media Sources, Deciding a Precise Position, Constructing a Thesis, Including Evidence, Creating a Works Cited, and Annotating a Works Cited

Student Activities (in both PDF & Google Slides/Docs)

• Unit Notes: record and reflect on learning throughout the unit
• Unit Hook: quiz on eye-popping statistics and facts about this global village
• Population Growth Activities:
  - gain overview on the last 200 years of growth
  - analyze historical growth maps
  - explore countries' population pyramids and their demographic transition
  - deep-dive into the growth issues Japan and Nigeria are experiencing
• Globalization Activities:
  - look at several examples, graphs, and maps of globalization
  - track the cross-globe journey of the humble t-shirt
  - gain overview of last few decades of globalization
  - explore MIT’s OpenCourseWare and the explosion of free e-learning
  - watch the fascinating documentary, Two Million Minutes
• Natural Resources Activities:
  - explore alarming maps of the depletion of the world's resources
  - simulate the vastly uneven eco footprints using popcorn kernels
  - compare eco-footprint scores across the globe
  - calculate one's own footprint
  - deep-dive into one of the world's most sustainable yet consumption-heavy places in the documentary, City of the Future: Singapore

Projects & Assessments

• Current Event Analysis Project & Discussion:
  - research a specific population, globalization, or natural resource issue, comparing countries and exploring problems and solutions
  - share and reflect with classmates in a Socratic Seminar-style discussion
• Reflective Letter Writing Project:
  - using a step-by-step template, create a powerful evidence-based, reflective letter that encapsulates both knowledge and perspective gained from the unit
• Unit Essay:
  - culminate learning and takeaway with this DBQ-style essay
  - support students with a collaborative brainstorm activity, detailed instructions, outline template, sentence stems, and rubrics, that asks them to answer “Is the world getting bigger or smaller?”

Note on Resources Used

All video clips, full-length documentaries, news articles, and limited photo galleries of book images can be accessed free online at the time of this latest update (links included). However, it's encouraged to purchase the book, Material World, and the videos, Two Million Minutes and City of the Future: Singapore, to secure future access.

What Other Teachers Are Saying

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I've used this resource for the past two years and now it's been updated for digital and I'm so excited!! I teach 9th grade World Geography and we focus on human geography for all of the second semester. I teach thematically and this resource is perfect for this approach. Some of my student's favorite activities are the "How Big is 8 Billion Poster" and "Living on a Dollar a Day". Thank you so much for making the update, I'm sure it wasn't an easy task. - Sarah

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Used this in a Contemporary Issues class and it was a great resource. Tons of information that would be very difficult to consolidate otherwise. There are a lot of activities too that could all be assigned or broken up into smaller assignments. - Zachary

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Everything all in one spot! Absolutely love that there is a pacing guide and a list of target questions to lead students on their PBL journey. Highly recommend. - Rachel

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I adapted this for my 6th and 7th graders and it is going very well - they are so engaged and I love all the high-quality materials and resources that I can pull from. 100% worth the purchase!! - Jessica

Also available are stand-alone units intended to better "plug and play " into a traditional human geography course and deep-dive a bit more into these topics.

• Population Growth: a 3-week unit exploring the exponential, yet very uneven growth in recent decades, and what this all means for the future
• Globalization: a 4-week unit exploring the modern era of trade, technology, and travel that has created unbelievable economic cooperation and cultural diffusion

Like this unit? Grab the whole course!

Global Issues is a semester-long current events, human geography, and environmental science all-in-one course that will create global citizens out of your students

• World Population, Demographics, & Poverty Unit: explore worldwide population numbers, extreme poverty, and demographics
• Growth, Globalization, & Natural Resources Unit: explore the growth and shrinking of our global population, connectivity, and resources
• Sustainability & Consumption of Water, Energy, & Garbage Unit: explore the ever-increasing water, fossil fuel, and garbage footprints
• Global Priorities Research Project: culminate learning with this capstone project that strengthens research, sourcing, and writing skills to turn your students into global citizens

This listing is for one license for regular, non-commercial classroom use by a single teacher only. Commercial use like online teaching (ex. Outschool) or sharing with other teachers (ex. shared drive, in a Facebook group, in a professional development training) is strictly prohibited.

By purchasing a license to this resource, you have access to all future updates at no cost, available under “My Purchases." Multiple and transferable licenses are available for purchase. PDF files are uneditable, other files have editing abilities, unless otherwise stated. All files are protected under federal copyright laws.

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