Human Impact on Natural Resources Inquiry Lab

Middle School Inquiry Lab on Human Impact on Natural Resources

In this lab students will be able to determine the impact that humans have had on Earth through a cookie mining activity. They will use the Internet site listed to answer questions on humanity’s impact on the environment.

Each inquiry lab will contain an essential question that will drive the lesson and make students think. For this lesson, the essential question is:

• How does the increase in human activities like mining affect Earth’s systems?

BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND MATERIALS LIST:

Students will begin the lab by reading the essential question and background information. This can be done individually, as lab groups, or as a whole class. If you consider lab groups, you also might include some type of whole class formative checks before digging into the lab.

Materials List:

• chocolate chip cookie (1 per group)
• toothpicks (2 per group)
• paper towel
• Smithsonian Interactive Atlas

PROCEDURE:

This lab will certainly give your students an opportunity to “pick” at their food. This two-part lab will help students to understand how humans can negatively affect the environment when mining for resources. In the first part of the lab, students will make observations on the condition of their cookie before they mine for resources. After the five-minute time limit, students will make a second observation on the condition of their cookie after it has been mined for the chocolate chips. Allowing the students to eat the cookie afterwards will be up to the instructor.

For the second part of the lab, students will use the interactive website to research population, deforestation, extinction, and where the most land on Earth is protected. This portion is intended to educate to students how humans play a vital role in how we treat our planet.

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING:

At this point in the lab, students will be checked for understanding by answering questions about their findings. Here are a few that come with the lab:

• People are using more non-renewable resources than they did in the past. How will this effect future generations?
• As the population of humans increase, what are some things that you predict would also increase?

CONCLUSION

Students will go back to the essential question and write a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to conclude the lab. Once completed, students will reflect back on their learning by answering the following questions:

1. How is the increased population of humans on Earth related to the increase in activities like mining?
2. What could be done to minimize the impact of human activity like mining?

MODIFIED AND INDEPENDENT INQUIRY VERSIONS

All of the Kesler Science inquiry labs come with three different modification levels. Each lab is differentiated using the icons below.

 

STANDARDS ALIGNMENT

NGSS: MS ESS3-4 – Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.