Colour in Your Carbon Footprint

• In this activity, students color a footprint illustration to correspond with the level of emissions that result from their lifestyle choices.
• Students will learn how their daily activities affect the planet and some solutions to reduce their impact.

Positives

• This resource encourages students to take personal responsibility for their own lifestyle and activities.
  
• This resource presents solutions to reducing one's carbon footprint in the teacher guide, which teachers can use to facilitate classroom discussion.
  

Additional Prerequisites

• Students should be familiar with carbon emissions, their impact on the environment, and where they come from.
• The teacher must print and distribute the illustration to the students.
• Teachers and students have the opportunity to expand their knowledge by reading the additional material in the "Sources" section.

Differentiation

• Students can write a summary of the activity, including an explanation of greenhouse gases, carbon footprint, and climate change.
• Teachers can ask students to brainstorm ways to reduce their carbon footprint and explain how those ways will help the environment.
• Connections can be made with mathematics classes by challenging students to collect and graph data in a bar or pie graph (e.g., # of students who mostly eat meat, # of students who eat some meat, # of students who don't eat meat very often or at all).

• Other resources that allow students to explore their carbon footprint include Carbon Check: Your Carbon Footprint and Footprint Calculator.