- Essential Question for the Unit: In what ways do human characteristics alter the physical characteristics of land and impact the environment?
- Lesson 1: This lesson serves as an introduction to physical characteristics. Through this lesson, students will learn to identify the four physical characteristics, landforms, climate, natural hazards, and natural resources, and they will identify physical characteristics of their community.
- Lesson 2: This lesson introduces students to how people adapt to physical characteristics. The class with begin with a current event to show students that what we learn in social studies is important because it occurs every day. The students will then learn how people adapt to physical characteristics by identifying how people adapt to different types of environments.
- *Lesson 3: This lesson begins to bring physical and human characteristics together. Through the activity of collage, the students will create their own community with physical characteristics. They will then think of ways that people will need to adapt to the environment of this community. The students will then be introduced to the idea of human characteristics. Through this lesson, the students will identify how people adapt the physical characteristics of an environment to fit their needs.
- Lesson 4: This lesson focuses on how humans change the environment to meet their needs and wants. Through this lesson, the students will reflect on the community that they created in the previous lesson and identify how the environment will be impacted by the added human characteristics.
- *Lesson 5: In the final lesson, the focus is teaching students how to change their impact and society's impact on the environment. To do this, the students will learn about Chris Jordan's artwork, and how he uses his work to impact society's view on social issues. The students will then identify ways that they can decrease their impact on the environment, and how they can increase society's understanding of these issues.
Image courtesy of The Academy of St. Francis of Assisi.