• In this activity, students get outside to gather information about their community to evaluate the environmental strengths and challenges. 
• Students gather numerical data, analyze maps, conduct surveys, or talk to experts to evaluate their defined community. 

Positives

• The website for this activity has lots of suggestions and background materials that will help make the activity a success.
  

Additional Prerequisites

• If students complete the full process, be sure to have them start a portfolio of their work.
• There is no lesson plan given for this activity, so you will need to construct one using the given resources.
• Before starting the activity, be sure to have answered these questions (to help define the scope of work for students): How will you define the community for this activity? Will students gather information about all aspects of the environment, or just one? Which sources of information will students use to create this inventory?

Differentiation

• This can be completed as a standalone activity or as one step in a larger community-action and problem-solving process (see other EarthForce resources for other steps in the process).
• The website for this activity includes tutorial videos resources for introducing the inventory to students, and tools for determining the root causes of issues.
• Other hands-on activities include this solar oven resource and this wind energy resource. 

This resource addresses the listed standards. To fully meet standards, search for more related resources.