Hi, I’m Lindsey, and I’m going to be sharing with you the activity In Search of Sustainable Life. Now, in this activity, students identify three different types of sustainability and then develop a sustainability index of ten factors that they think are the most important in determining whether or not a community is sustainable. Lastly, students develop methods of data collection to measure those factors.
Now, this lesson fits really well with environmental science classes, both AP and general, as well as human geography, geography, and economics. I’ll be sharing with you the high school version of this activity, but we do have a middle school version as well, so at the end of this description, I’ll share with you the similarities and differences between those two versions.
Activity Procedure, Part 1
To begin the activity, you’ll first show students the three community photos that are found at the end of the lesson plan. For each photo, you’ll want to ask students, is this community sustainable, and why or why not?
Next, you’ll divide the class into small groups, and in their groups, they’ll brainstorm what factors they think make a community sustainable. And after this brainstorming has happened, you’ll come together as a whole class and have each group share some of their ideas as you write their ideas on the board. Now, students might mention things like access to nutritious food, availability of green space, a low crime rate, or availability of public transit, for example.
Now, with all of these factors listed on the board, you’ll want to ask students if they see any patterns between the factors or any relationships, or can these factors be grouped together in any sort of way? And if they don’t come to it on their own, you’ll want to share with them that there’s actually three different types of sustainability. There’s human or social sustainability, environmental sustainability, which students might already be familiar with, and economic sustainability.
So in their small groups, students will now look at the large class list and see if they can categorize all of these factors into one of those three groups. Now, some factors might actually fall into multiple categories. For example, bike lanes. That could be considered environmental sustainability because it decreases carbon dioxide emissions, as well as human or social sustainability because it improves quality of life.
Now, it’s time to create a class sustainability index. So the sustainability index will list 10 factors that students think are most vital in determining whether or not a community is sustainable. So to decide on these 10 factors, you’ll have to conduct a class vote. After the vote, you’ll have your sustainability index, and it’s time to move to part two.
Activity Procedure, Part 2
In part two, students first determine measurable indicators for each factor on the class index. But before they do that, it’s really important for students to understand the difference between a factor and an indicator.
So a factor is an item or a circumstance that contributes to a sustainable community. So for example, a factor might be a community having a strong waste management system. An indicator is a way to measure or gauge this particular factor. So using the waste management system example, the indicator could be the percentage of people who consistently recycle their waste.
At this point, you’ll have students again return to their small groups and brainstorm some possible measurable indicators for each factor on the class sustainability index. Next, the groups will each pick, or you could assign, one factor indicator pair and consider how you might actually collect data to measure that particular indicator. So again, going back to our waste management example, somebody could follow the recycling truck and count the number of houses that the truck actually stops at and how many houses it skips.
Students can use the provided student worksheet to organize their thoughts, and we’ve also included a sample sustainability index in the lesson plan that has 10 factors as well as 10 indicators and 10 possible methods for data collection. When all the groups have finished their worksheets, you’ll have the groups pair up and share their factor indicator pairs as well as discuss any limitations they think might exist for the data collection method that they came up with or if their method is actually able to be implemented in the real world.
Now the lesson plan also includes some discussion questions for students to reflect on this activity. In the discussion questions, students are asked to consider the effect that population growth might have on a community and even consider whether or not their sustainability index might be useful 10, 20 years down the road if population significantly grows.
Middle School Lesson Adaptation
Like I mentioned at the beginning, there is a middle school version of this activity, and it’s very similar in terms of the objectives, but the procedure is slightly different. So in part one, students are still creating a class sustainability index, but it’s a little bit more simplified and streamlined than in the high school version. In part two, students actually pick just one factor and they apply that factor in their own community. To organize their thoughts, they actually use a foldable, and I’ve created a foldable here using the example for green space as the factor. The first thing they’ll do is consider what they already know about this factor in their community. What do they observe? So for example, they might observe that there aren’t any trees by their house, but there are lots of trees by their school. Next, they consider what improvements could be made regarding this factor in their community. So for example, they may plant a tree by their house or turn a parking lot into a park. And lastly, what challenges might they face when trying to make these improvements? Examples using our green space factor could be getting money for the tree or caring for the new park and mowing the grass.
And that’s the activity In Search of Sustainable Life. For more great activities dealing with sustainability and other population-related issues, visit www.populationeducation.org. Thanks for watching!