Latin America:
Our Neighbors at Home and to the South
Population Data for Five Central
American Countries
Essential Questions
Adressed through these lessons:
Question # 3 Who are the peoples of Latin America
both past and present? In this lesson, students will
use current data on life expectancy, infant mortality, and adult illiteracy
rates for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Guatemala to find relationships
between the countries and form an opinion about standard of living.
Skills:
- Gather data about the lifestyles and social/cultural needs and wants of
the peoples of five Central American countries.
- Compare data of Latin American people in a variety of countries to learn
more about their lives.
- Form opinions about the quality of life for people in these countries based
on collected data.
Materials: Internet access (UN's InfoNation
Site)and activity sheet
Procedures:
- Together as a class look at the
Definition
of terms at InfoNation and discuss life expectancy,
infant mortality, and adult illiteracy rates.
- Tell students that they are going to gather data about
5 Central American countries on life expectancy, infant mortality, and adult
illiteracy rates for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Guatemala.
Then they will analyze the data, find relationships, and form opinions based
on the data.
- Give a brief demonstration of how to use the InfoNation
site, then allow the students to begin work on gathering their data.
- When students are done gathering their data, they can look at the other
data available to them about these countries.
- When all students are finished, have them get in pairs to compare their
answers. Walk around to listen to responses for accuracy and insight.
- Bring the whole class together to discuss the relationships they found in
the data and to discuss the question, "Which country shown has the highest
standard of living?"
Assessment and Evaluation:
Students will be evaluated on the following scale.
Acceptable: The chart is filled in neatly. One or more relationships
are found. Opinion presented does not use information from the data.
Commendable:The chart is filled in neatly. Two or more relationships
are found. Opinion presented uses some information from the data.
Outstanding: The chart is filled in neatly. Two or more relationships
are found. Opinion presented makes extensive use of the data.