WHAT ROLE DOES GEOGRAPHY PLAY IN THE CENSUS?

TEACHER VERSION

Subject Level: High School Geography
Grade Level: 8–9
Approximate Time Required: 45–60 minutes

Learning Objectives:

• Students will be able to define and look closely at different types of census geographic areas (sections of land the Census Bureau uses to organize data), and figure out how data from these different areas might be useful.

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Activity Description

Students will learn about and review important geography and census words, discover how the U.S. Census Bureau divides up land into different sections, and understand why census information is collected this way.

Suggested Grade Level: 8
Approximate Time Required: 45–60 minutes

Learning Objectives:

• Students will be able to define and look closely at different types of census geographic areas, and figure out how data from these different areas might be useful.

Topics:

• Boundaries (the edges or limits of an area)
• Geographic entities (areas of land, like a state or county)
• Spatial thinking (thinking about space and location)

Skills Taught:

• Analyzing data
• Drawing conclusions

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Materials Required

• The student version of this activity (8 pages)
• A printed copy of the definitions found in this teacher version

Activity Items

These items are part of the activity. You can find them, along with instructions for viewing them online, at the end of this teacher version.

• Item 1: Excerpt From Chapter 1 of the Geographic Areas Reference Manual
• Item 2: Standard Hierarchy of Census Geographic Entities (a chart showing how areas fit inside bigger areas)
• Item 3: Examples of Census Tracts, Census Block Groups, and Census Blocks

For more background on the Census Bureau to share with your students, read "Census Bureau 101 for Students." You can print this sheet and hand it out to your class.

Standards Addressed

See the chart below. For more details, read "Overview of Education Standards and Guidelines Addressed in Statistics in Schools Activities."

National Geography Standards

Standard	Grade	The student knows and understands:
1 – How to use maps and other geographic tools, digital mapping technology, and spatial thinking to understand and share information	8	Properties and Functions of Geographic Representations. The pros and cons of using different ways to show geographic information — such as maps, globes, graphs, diagrams, photos taken from planes or satellites, and digital visualizations — to study patterns in how things are spread out across space
3 – How to study the way people, places, and environments are arranged across Earth's surface	8	Spatial Concepts. The meaning and use of ideas about space, such as how easy a place is to reach, how spread out something is, how crowded it is, and how connected things are to each other

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Bloom's Taxonomy

Students will analyze the differences between various census geographic entities.

Creating
Evaluating
Analyzing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering

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Teacher Notes

Before the Activity

Teachers should review the terms and definitions on the following pages with students. For more information on some of these terms, visit the links below:

• Administrative entity, legal entity, and statistical entity: www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/training/legal-and-geographic-entities.html
• American Community Survey: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs
• Boundary, census block, census block group, census tract, and geographic presentation of data: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/glossary.html

Cut out each term and its definition from the pages that follow, along the dotted lines, so each term is separate from its definition.

Spatial
Having to do with space on Earth's surface

American Community Survey
A survey run every month by the U.S. Census Bureau to show how communities are changing over time. By asking questions to a sample (a smaller group that represents the whole population), it collects national information on more than 35 topics, such as education, income, housing, and jobs.

Decennial Census
A count done every 10 years by the U.S. Census Bureau. It counts every person living in the United States, based on where they lived on April 1 of that census year. ("Decennial" means "every ten years.")

Boundary
The edge or outer limit of a geographic area, such as a census block, census tract, county, or town. A boundary may or may not follow something you can actually see, like a river or a street.

Geographic Hierarchy
A system showing how geographic areas relate to each other, where every area (except the smallest one) can be split into smaller pieces, which can sometimes be split again. (For example: states are divided into counties, and counties are divided into smaller sections called county subdivisions.)

Geographic Entity
Any type of geographic area, such as a state, county, town, county subdivision, census tract, census block, country, or territory.

Administrative Entity
A geographic area — usually with official legal boundaries, but often without elected leaders — that is created to run elections or handle other government tasks. Examples include school districts and voting districts.

Legal Entity
A geographic area whose boundaries, name, and description come from official documents like charters, laws, or treaties. Examples include the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. territories, counties, cities, towns, villages, American Indian reservations, Alaska Native villages, congressional districts, and school districts. The Census Bureau only recognizes the entities and boundaries that exist as of January 1 each year.

Statistical Entity
A geographic area (or a combination of areas) that the Census Bureau uses to organize and report data. Its boundaries are not set by law, and it has no government power of its own.

Small-Area Data
Census information collected at the smallest levels: the census block, block group, and census tract.

Census Tract
A small, fairly permanent section of a county, created by a local group of census data users to help organize information. Ideally, each tract contains about 4,000 people and 1,600 homes. Tracts fit inside counties, and their boundaries usually follow things you can see on a map, like roads or rivers.

Census Block
An area with borders made up of things you can see — like streets, roads, streams, and railroad tracks — as well as things you can't see, like certain property lines, city or county borders, and school district lines. It is the smallest area for which the Census Bureau reports decennial census data.

Census Block Group
A statistical area that usually has between 600 and 3,000 people. It is used to organize and report data.

More Teacher Notes

Teachers should introduce the Census Bureau to students (see the information sheet mentioned earlier).

During the Activity

Have students read Item 1. You could have students take turns reading paragraphs aloud, read in small groups, or read the passage yourself while students follow along. Afterward, ask students what they learned from the excerpt.

Hand out the slips of paper with the terms and definitions, giving each student one term or one definition. If you have fewer students than slips of paper, remove a few terms and definitions from the stack. If you have more students than slips, put students into small groups and give each group one term or definition. Then have students (or groups) walk around the room and try to match each term to its correct definition. When a pair or group feels confident they've made a correct match, have them raise their hands or stand in a designated spot in the room.

Next, have students tape their terms and definitions next to each other on the board. If some matches are wrong, tell students to work together to find the mistakes and fix them — step in to help if needed. Then review all the terms and definitions as a class, using Item 2 to explain how these geographic areas fit together in a hierarchy (a system where bigger areas contain smaller ones).

After that, review Item 3 with the class and have students work individually on Questions 1 and 2.

After the Activity

Have students share their answers to Question 2 with a partner. If time allows, ask students to find a common theme in their answers and write one sentence answering this question: What role does geography play in the census? Then ask partner groups to share their answers to Question 2 (and their one-sentence summary, if time allows) with the whole class.

Extension Ideas

• Have students read this Census Bureau blog post about census blocks: www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2011/07/what-are-census-blocks.html
• Show students the Geography Data Gems for more in-depth information about the Census Bureau's geographic ideas: https://www.census.gov/data/academy/topics/geography.html
• Have students explore the 2020 Census Demographic Data Map Viewer, an interactive map tool with 2020 Census data at the state, county, and census tract levels. It includes information on population, race and Hispanic origin, families and households, housing, and group living arrangements: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/geo/demographicmapviewer.html

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Student Activity

Click here to download a printable version for students.

Activity Items

These items are part of the activity and appear at the end of this student version.

• Item 1: Excerpt From Chapter 1 of the Geographic Areas Reference Manual
• Item 2: Standard Hierarchy of Census Geographic Entities
• Item 3: Examples of Census Tracts, Census Block Groups, and Census Blocks

Student Learning Objectives

• I will be able to work with other students to define different types of census geographic areas.
• I will be able to closely examine three different types of census geographic areas.
• I will be able to figure out how data from different census geographic areas might be useful.

Your teacher will lead the first part of this activity. During this time, you'll review Item 1 (the excerpt from the Geographic Areas Reference Manual), take part in a hands-on activity about key geography and census terms, and then review Item 2 (the chart showing how census areas fit together).

Next, you'll look at Item 3 to answer the following questions:

1. How do these three types of census areas compare with one another in size — which covers the largest area, and which covers the smallest?

Answer: Census tracts cover the largest area, and census blocks cover the smallest. (Census block groups fall in the middle.)

Teacher note: This question might be tricky for students, because the smallest area may look artificially larger on the map due to its enlarged scale. Remind students to look carefully at the scale shown in the map key.

2. Based on what you learned in Item 1, how might data from these specific areas be used, and by whom? Why is dividing up geographic space in this way helpful?