This detailed mapping activity will get your students involved in observing your community, reflecting, mapping, analyzing, refining, and planning for future action.
It is meant to be a multi-day or week-long project and will provide students with a learning path that results in increased community awareness and mapping skills.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This project includes several options for extension and will work with students at various levels.
This inquiry approach to learning is extremely engaging.
Additional Prerequisites
A free 60-day trial to arcgis.com is necessary to complete a map on the site.
Physical materials needed include: markers or crayons, large sheets of white paper, glue or tape, stickers, a community map, and a camera or photos of your community.
Differentiation
This resource would work equally well in a science or social studies class; a creative idea would to be to work together between science and social studies classrooms to complete this project and the ensuing environmental campaign together.
Cross-curricular connections could be made in art classes by adding more artistic components to the mapping project and creating art to get the community involved in future campaigns.
This project would work well as a whole group project for smaller classes or as a large group project for larger class sizes. Students will likely need to work together over several classes in order to complete the mapping activity.
Scientist Notes
Students will be equipped with fundamental mapping skills using Esri and the ArcGIS web-based mapping tool. It is ideal for them to create a project or activity, then use their mapping skills to proffer environmental solutions in their community. This is highly recommended for classroom use.
Standards
English Language Arts
Reading: Science & Technical Subjects (6-12)
11-12.RST.3 Follow precisely a complex multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks; analyze the specific results based on explanations in the text.
Social Sciences
Geography (K-12)
HS.38 Use technologies to create maps to display and explain the spatial patterns of cultural and environmental characteristics at multiple scales.
HS.40 Use geographic data to analyze the interconnectedness of physical and human regional systems (such as a river valley and culture, water rights/use in regions, choice/impact of settlement locations) and their interconnectedness to global communities.
HS.44 Assess how changes in the environmental and cultural characteristics of a place or region influence spatial patterns of trade, land use, and issues of sustainability.
Social Science Analysis (K-12)
8.34 Analyze how a specific problem can manifest itself at local, regional, and global levels over time, identifying its characteristics and causes, and the challenges and opportunities faced by those trying to address the problem.
HS.75 Evaluate options for individual and collective actions to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
