Teacher Notes China (East Asia)
Big Idea – Population Density
Spatial Thinking Skill – Spatial Analogy
Scaffold Outline:
3-5: The sample lessons focus on one big idea about geographic analogies: places in similar positions
in different countries can be more alike (at least in some ways) than places in different positions in the
same country. In the readaloud Activity 2, children discover that the weather at a place in northern
China resembles the weather at a place in the northern United States more closely than the weather in
the southern part of China.
COMMENT: As with any abstract kind of reasoning, teaching spatial analogies
will require a lot of examples and careful listening to identify misconceptions.
The reward is an exceptionally powerful way of teaching about places –
by matching them with familiar places that are “in the same position”
and therefore likely to have similar conditions.
Resources: This folder has an electronic presentation about weather analogies in China and the
United States. This could be used either to introduce the readings in Activity 2 or to summarize
after students have done the activity. Depending on where your school is, there may be climatic
analogies for your community on other continents – Lisbon and San Francisco, Tashkent and
Salt Lake City, Argentina and Kansas, etc. The Big Idea Presentations and clickable Atlases for
China, Australia, Europe, and especially South America have layers that illustrate climate
analogies in those regions.
Students can also use atlases, wall maps, or the internet to look for river analogies, such as cities
located near the mouths of rivers, the places where they empty into lakes or oceans (New York
City and Shanghai, for example, or New Orleans and Rotterdam).
A third category of spatial analogies involve neighborhoods in similar positions in different cities
– places near stadiums, for example, or next to rail yards, or near government centers, or across
the road from shopping malls.
A fourth category of map searches involve looking for cities located in similar positions near
important edges, such as between forests and grasslands, or where rivers leave mountains and
flow across plains, or where highways cross borders into other countries.
In all cases, the key is to find analogies that are meaningful in your state or community. Once they
master the idea of analogies, however, they can apply it to topics and places that are less familiar
– analogies then become a teaching tool to be used, not a skill to be learned.
Activity
Weather Readaloud Set
Similar Locations in
Two Large Countries
(Climate Analogies
Simple)
Common Core: Reading Standards for Informational Text
Grade 4:
Key Ideas and Details: Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining
what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Interpret information presented visually,
orally or quantitatively and explain how the information contributes to
understanding.
6-12: In this grade range, we extend the idea of spatial analogies beyond easy-to-identify physical
features in order to look at other kinds of “similar positions.” The big idea about China, after all, is
population density, not weather! In both China and the United States, however, population density is
closely related to climate. Both countries are relatively crowded in their warm and rainy eastern parts.
Both countries have low population densities in the cold northern areas, and even fewer people in the
dry and mountainous western areas.
China, however, does not have a West Coast, and therefore it does not have a second area of high
population density in “a location that is similar to” California, Oregon, or Washington.
Population density, in turn, has an influence on many other landscape features in both countries –
property value, building size and spacing, road networks, airports, and so forth. The *text chapter, Big
Idea Presentation, and clickable Atlas for China discuss many of the consequences of high population
density – the ability to do large building projects, invent new products, support stadiums, theaters,
universities, and hospitals, and so forth.
Other Resources: The *Multimedia Presentation folder has units about population pyramids, ruralurban contrasts, Three Gorges Dam, and exports (Tea in China). The internet has plenty of good
materials about Chinese inventions, the one-child policy of population control, and the demographic
transition. A recent book, Tribes, has a chapter about overseas Chinese people on other continents.
Activity
Climate Analogy
 Worksheet
 Clickable China
Climagraphs
 Clickable US
Climagraphs
 Analogous Climates
 Reading Climagraphs
Comparing Populations
 Comparing
Populations
 Simple populations
pyramids
 Urban Population
Density
 Population History
Graph
 Population Pyramids
Michigan Content Standards
6-G2.1.1: Describe the landform features and the climate of the region (within
the Western or Eastern Hemispheres) under study. (Also 7-G2.1.1)
6-G3.1.1: Construct and analyze climate graphs for two locations at different
latitudes and elevations in the region to answer geographic questions and
make predictions based on patterns.(Also 7-G3.1.1)
7-G1.1.1: Explain and use a variety of maps, globes, and web based geography
technology to study the world, including global, interregional, regional, and
local scales.
7-G1.2.4: Draw the general population distribution of the Eastern Hemisphere
on a map, analyze the patterns, and propose two generalizations about the
location and density of the population.
7-G6.1.1: Contemporary Investigations
Urbanization – Investigate urbanization and its consequences for the world’s
population.
High School: Contemporary Global Issues
CG1 Population: Explain the causes and consequences of population changes
over the past 50 years by analyzing the population change, distributions of
population, relationship of the population changes to global interactions, and
their impact on three regions of the world
High School World History and Geography
5.3.2 East Asia through the 18th Century – Analyze the major political,
religious, economic, and cultural transformations in East Asia by analyzing the
major reasons for the continuity of Chinese society under the Ming and Qing
dynasties, including the role of Confucianism, the civil service, and Chinese
oceanic exploration
Ming Dynasty
 Ming Reading Set
 Ming Fact Theory or
Opinion
 Ming Causes and
Effects
 Answers and Graphs
Income Rural Urban Trends Common Core: Math (graphs); Language Arts (Critical Reading)
Capstone: China Activity 4 looks at the complex mix of causes and effects that surrounded the fall of
the Ming Dynasty in 1644. This collapse was hastened, if not actually caused, by interactions with
nomadic people in the colder and drier north, as well as an unprecedented serious of environmental
disasters in the previous five years. The *text chapter will have graphs of population history in China,
along with events that triggered several population collapses that resulted in reductions of more than a
third of the population.
COMMENT: American students (except, perhaps, those who live in cities like Detroit or
small towns on the Great Plains) have a hard time accepting the idea
that population could actually go down. The short history and exceptionally
favorable environment in North America have given them the idea that growth
is “normal” and decline all but impossible. The population history of China
(as shown in Activity 3x), therefore, may strike many students as fanciful, at best.
Resources: The Big Idea presentation and clickable Atlas can provide maps and background for
investigations of rural land-use patterns, as well as large projects like the Great Wall, Grand
Canal, Silk Roads, and, recently, Three Gorges Dam.
Differences in population density are very obvious in virtual field trips to Hong Kong, along the
Wei River in north-central China, near Lanzhou on the old Silk Road, and along the Amur river
(the border with Russia), especially between Luobei and Tongjiang.
* Teaching Geography, 3rd edition, New York: Guilford Press, 2014, Phil Gersmehl
Curriculum Connections:
Activities
Weather readaloud
stories in two countries
Climate analogies in
two countries
Population patterns in
China and the U.S.
Population pyramid
activities
Population density and
urban "footprint"
Graph of population
history in China
Fall of the Ming:
climate change and
population
Rural/urban population
and income trends
Approx
Grade
Elem
E/M/
U
E/M/
U
M/U
Related
Class
Earth
Sci
Earth
Sci
Geog
Common
Spatial
Core
Reasoning
Reading
Analogy
Math
Analogy
Writing
Analogy
Demog
Math
Comparison
M/U
Econ
Math
Comparison
M/U
History
Math
Change
M/U
History
Reading
Spatial
Model
M/U
Econ
Math
Comparison
Keywords
north, south, cold, hot, snow,
hurricane, names
climagraph, latitude,
position, coastline
dot map, population density,
balance, bias
population graph, birth/death
rate, growth, replacement
density, dot map, area,
crowding, urbanized area
graph, population, growth,
collapse, dynasty, plague
growth, cooling, flood,
drought, nomad, rebellion
graph, income, per, capita, 1child, purchasing power