How Do Humans Impact the Environment?

As the world continues to develop and expand, human activities are profoundly impacting the different biomes around the globe. While some of these impacts have been positive, such as increased conservation efforts and eco-tourism, many have been negative, leading to habitat loss, deforestation, and declining biodiversity. Help your students see the effects of their actions (both positive and negative) by guiding them through a Human Impact Research Project.

Biome Research Projects for Kids – Upper Grades

This resource has been created for upper-level students. This research project has your students doing the following.

• Identify a biome of interest to them, and determine its location.
• Researching the living and nonliving factors in the biome.
• Researching how humans make positive and negative impacts on the biome
• Identifying laws or regulations put in place to protect the world’s biomes.
• Researching ways humans can protect or improve the biome.
• Identifying valuable sources of information and citing those sources.
• Use internet resources and other printed resources to complete research.

Students are given a rubric to assess their work and graphic organizers to guide them through each phase of the research process.

How to Prepare This Resource

To prepare this project for your students, print one set of the project pages and make each student a packet of materials. These will need to be printed single-sided. Give each student a packet and some research material, and set them to work!

This resource was created by Mike Bailey, a teacher in New York and Teach Starter Collaborator.