This quick activity will get students thinking about the assets in their communities and what they can do to help the people, animals, and environment around them.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This activity is a great way to get students thinking about their community and what they can do to improve it.
This activity can be scaled up into a large project, or it can be used as a quick brainstorming activity.
The resource provides links to extension activities, such as a guide for putting the plan into action and instructions for making a community map.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be able to distinguish between human, animal, and environmental assets (a list is included on the worksheet).
The printable PDF mind map is titled "Printable Activity Guide" and is linked under the list of Compassionate Traits Practiced.
Differentiation
Cross-curricular connections could be made in language arts classes while reading or writing about the environment or community.
This activity would be a great way for older students to start a lesson or unit.
Teachers with younger students could use the activity to assess learning at the end of a lesson or unit.
To extend this activity, consider having your class create a giant mind map with poster paper and art supplies to display.
Scientist Notes
This resource is effective to guide students to mind map critical assets that can be beneficial to humans, animals, and the environment and how they can be protected. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.9.6-8 Evaluate the influences of long-term human-induced environmental change on spatial patterns of conflict and cooperation.
D2.Geo.6.K-2 Identify some cultural and environmental characteristics of specific places.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.6-8 Assess their individual and collective capacities to take action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
D4.7.K-2 Identify ways to take action to help address local, regional, and global problems.
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
K-ESS3-3 Communicate solutions that will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or other living things in the local environment.
4-ESS3-2 Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.
