Indiana Social Studies WG.4.3
The Standard
Hypothesize about the impact of push factors and pull factors on human migration in selected regions and about changes in these factors over time.
2026 Indiana Academic Standards: K-12 Social Studies · Characteristics, Distribution, and Migration of Human Populations
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify conditions that make people leave a place and conditions that draw them elsewhere. They predict where people might move and explain how changes in jobs, safety, or policy could change that movement.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given a map and two dated source cards, a student can predict how migration between two places might change. They name a reason to leave, a reason to arrive, and what changed over time.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may call a hardship at the destination a push factor, rather than a reason not to move there. They may assume that one available job means everyone will move, or that migration factors stay the same over time.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: In 1916, northern factories needed workers. By 1933, many factory jobs were gone, but Jim Crow laws remained in the South. Predict how migration north might change, and name the push and pull factors behind your prediction.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Have pairs sort index cards labeled Venezuela food shortages, Venezuela job losses, Colombia jobs, and Colombia family ties, then draw a route on a map.
Ask students to write: Why might someone leave Venezuela in 2016 but decide to stay in 2023? Name one condition that changed.
Give pairs 1916 factory hiring and 1933 layoffs cards; have them predict which year drew more migrants from Mississippi to Chicago.
Show a local job ad and rental listing; ask students to predict whether they would attract a new resident and what else that person would need to know.
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Printable WG.4.3 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- GHW.3.3
Analyze the changes in population characteristics and physical and human environments that resulted from the migration of peoples within, between, and among wor...
- GHW.3.2
Identify and describe the push-pull factors that resulted in the migration of human population over time, and detect changes in these factors.
- WG.4.4
Evaluate the impact of human migration on physical and human systems (economic, government, environment, individuals, society, and culture).
- 8.G.6
Analyze human and physical factors that have influenced migration and settlement patterns and relate them to the economic development of the United States.
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