Impacts of Population Growth - Hands on Card Sorting Activity - for High School

Engaging hands on activity to have kids think critically and discuss the impact of human population growth. In part one students will sort a set of cards to determine if the situation described on the card will increase or decrease with the increase of human population.  Some of the cards do not have a clear answer. This is intentional to get student’s discussing and backing up their statements with evidence.  For example students will decide if the situation card “Number of Plants” would increase or decrease if there were more people on the planet.  Those thinking of a Forrest might say it will decrease, those thinking of farmland might argue increase.    I like to make the kids (groups of 2) argue it out and come to a consensus about where they put it.  These cards are editable so if you want to change the phrasing on your version you can. Interesting ideas for the students to consider such as how will population growth effect the number of new inventions, conflict, poverty, alone time, biodiversity etc.

In part 2 students will then look at the pile of cards they said would increase and evaluate if this would be a positive or negative impact.  Then they sort the pile of cards that will be decreasing and evaluate if this would be a positive or negative impact.  Part 2 also involves opinion.  Although all students would probably agree that an increase in pollution is a negative outcome, an increase in the number of sports teams is a personal opinion.  I encourage students to discuss but to put their own opinion down on their worksheet. Finally student’s answer some reflection questions and then are asked to make their own cards to add to the stack for the next year. 

This activity sticks with kids they remember it years later and often on their own go home and discuss it with their families.

This style of activity works great for ADHD students, reluctant writers etc. As the number of students in my classes with some sort of identification keeps increasing I am inventing more activities that allow kids the same learning without as much writing and having to be quiet.  It works great for your ADHD students who need to be “DOING SOMETHING.”

I wrote this activity for a 10th grade Biology course, but it could be used in a variety of different courses: Environmental Science, General Science, Geography, Politics, World History.