Statistics Canada
www.statcan.gc.ca
Common menu bar links
Learning resources bulletin - January 2010
Dear teachers,
This bulletin presents free information and teaching materials available on Statistics Canada's Learning resources website.
Best wishes for a new decade in learning!
In this edition:
- Canada's population clock
- February 20th is UN day of Social Justice
- New Math lesson in E-STAT: Wages of men and women
- 2011 Census Teachers' Kit
- Education services in your region
At the time of writing this, Canada's estimated population is 33,956,941. As we venture into a new decade, Canada is growing in population by one unit every minute and 16 seconds. There are several factors that affect Canada's population growth such as birth and death rates, immigration and emigration.
Have your students make a guess at the expected population of Canada by July 1st, 2010. For the answer and further details on population growth plus a link to the world population clock, visit Canada's population clock.
The lesson Calculating population growth for a region helps students understand the components of population growth and leads to an appreciation of how the components of population growth can be used for civic planning.
February 20th is UN day of Social Justice
Starting in 2009, the United Nations General Assembly has designated February 20th each year as the day of Social Issues.
Perhaps you wish to prepare your students by having them explore their personal principles with respect to social justice, equity and human rights by completing a research or a data analysis project. Because of the nature of Statistics Canada's work, we have a wealth of data available to look at social issues. Some topic areas and links to specific data sources that you might suggest are available on our Investigating social justice issues section. Students can find direct links to data relating to crime, health, labour, spending and income, education, training and learning along with suggested questions to encourage exploration.
The datasets outlined on the Investigating social justice issues section are not meant to tell the whole story but are certainly an important piece of the puzzle.
Teachers are perhaps a student's best resource when it comes to making sense of the numbers, or investigating what the numbers demonstrate. We encourage you to open a discussion with your students, to challenge them to critically think about the circumstance around the numbers and to explore more deeply the environment surrounding the issues. See the Teachers notes.
New Math lesson in E-STAT: Wages of men and women
Use the new lesson Investigating gender differences in income with your students to examine the relationship between a person's gender (male or female) and their average employment income. Students will retrieve data from Statistics Canada's E-STAT database and create scatter plots. They will analyze the similarities and differences between two scatter plots (comparing data for provinces/territories and large urban centres) and use informal methods to determine the equations of lines of best fit. Students can then discuss in which province or territory females, on average, make the lowest percentage of males' employment income and why this might be.
Canada's next Census will be held in May 2011. Educators play an important role in its success by ensuring that students understand what a census is and what they and their families need to do to complete the census form. Statistics Canada's 2011 Census Teacher's Kit is designed for grades K-12. Each kit contains eight cross curricular activities that are classroom-ready and have been tested to meet provincial curriculum standards. Subject areas covered include language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, geography, history, visual arts, and English as a second language (ESL), allowing students to understand how the information collected in a census can be used. For more information…
Education services in your region
Need help using our resources in the classroom? Want print brochures or posters? Would you like an article on Statistics Canada's Learning resources for your newsletter? Contact Education services.
