Lesson Plan: Push and Pull Factors

National or State Standard(s) Addressed

Minnesota DOE, Strand III, Substrand I. The student will demonstrate knowledge of significant political and cultural developments of the late 20th century that affect global relations.

Minnesota DOE, Strand V, Substrand C. The student will understand the regional distribution of the human population at local to global scales and its patterns of change.

Lesson Outcomes/Objectives

SWBAT: give examples of the "push" and "pull" factors that cause people to leave their homes for somewhere else.

SWBAT: use Google Maps to obtain information about life in another country.

Sequence of Learning Activities

Anticipatory Set / Hook (time = 5 minutes ) I will welcome the students and briefly overview the schedule on the board. I will then introduce the subject of Somalia and play the first few minutes of the music video for “Somalia,” by Somali-American rapper K’Naan.

Frame/ Activity 1 (time = 15 minutes) Introduction to Push and Pull Factors
I will transition to the first activity by pointing out that, though K’Naan now lives in the United States, he speaks fondly and with concern about his native land of Somalia. Today, we are going to explore some of the reasons that people leave their homelands for places far away.

Next, I will briefly introduce “push” and “pull” factors. Basically, a “push” factor is something that makes one want to leave a place and a “pull” factor is something that attracts one to somewhere else.

Then, I will lead a brainstorming session using Wordle.net to assist in comprehension. He will ask students to list any “push” factors they can think of. As they do, he will type them into the text box. When the students have finished, Brian will click “create” and Wordle will instantly create a “word cloud” depicting the discussion we just had. We will do the same with “pull” factors.

Activity 2 (time = 30 minutes) Pair and Share
Next, students get together in pairs, with a computer for each pair. Their assignment is to find a news article about people moving from one place or another. They will be responsible for reading the article, writing a short summary of it, and marking the place of origin and destination of the people featured in it.

To guide students’ writing, I will ask them to answer the following questions in their summary:
• What is the title, publication name, and URL of your article?
• What country or countries does your article discuss?
• Is the human movement current or did it happen in the past? If so, when?
• What is causing people to leave this place?
• Is there anything that is attracting them to a new place?

The finished map would look something like this. You can click the markers on this map to read summaries and access the articles.


View Push-Pull News Map in a larger map

Conclusion: Review Map Results
We will take a few minutes at the end of class looking at our class map. Tomorrow, after I have had time to review the student summaries and map markers, we will debrief this assignment and explore a couple of the stories students found.