Exploring Appalachian Poverty in Ohio

Kathy Rowell, Sinclair Community College

Summary

As students investigate Appalachian poverty and its social policy implications, they will explore the difference between correlation and causation, learn about poverty indicators, and practice creating and interpreting graphs.

Learning Goals

Skill
After the completion of this module, the learner should be able to:

Explain the difference between correlation and causation.
Define the key concepts.
Create a bar chart and interpret it.

Substance

Discuss the correlations between living in an Appalachian county in Ohio and various indicators of poverty.

Context for Use

Students in this sociology class will role play as members of the governor's office to inform the Governor of many of the problems facing children in the United States and the State of Ohio. Data analysis pertaining to hunger, poverty, crime, health, and education are included as multiple resources for data, in addition to KidsCount, are used.

Description and Teaching Materials

Exercises: PDF (Acrobat (PDF) 101kB Mar25 09)
Exercises: DOC (Microsoft Word 47kB Mar25 09)
Grading Rubric: PDF (Acrobat (PDF) 50kB Mar25 09)
Grading Rubric: DOC (Microsoft Word 29kB Mar25 09)

Teaching Notes and Tips

This activity uses the charts, rankings and maps on KidsCount!. KidsCount is an easy-to-use tool to investigate U.S. trends using census data.

Assessment

Visit DataCounts! for assessment tools.

References and Resources

http://www.ssdan.net/content/kids-count-classroom

http://www.childrensdefense.org/

http://www.teenpregnancy.org/

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/

http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu

http://www.kidscount.org

Original Archive Module:
http://www.ssdan.net/datacounts/modules/index/rowell_appalachia_index.shtml

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