Mississippi Science ENV.4.2
The Standard
- ENV.4
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the interdependence of human sustainability and the environment.
Evaluate data and other information to explain how key natural resources (e.g., water sources, fertile soils, concentrations of minerals, and fossil fuels), natural hazards, and climate changes influence human activity (e.g., mass migrations, human health).
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Human Sustainability
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students read maps, graphs, and reports about resources, hazards, climate, and where people live. They use evidence to explain possible effects on migration, health, or other human activities.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can connect a change in water supply or flood risk to a measured change in people's lives. They cite specific data and explain what the data cannot prove on its own.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may treat one hot year as proof of climate change. They may assume people leave an area for one reason, even when jobs, housing, and other factors also matter.
How to Assess It
- Give students this exit ticket: From 2010 to 2020, reservoir volume fell from 80 to 40 million gallons, annual flood days rose from 2 to 12, and households leaving rose from 50 to 200. Ask them to explain a possible link, cite two numbers, and name one other reason households might leave.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs tracing paper and printed drought, crop yield, and population maps; have them mark places where the patterns overlap and where they do not.
Ask students to write a claim about why families left a flood-prone town, then identify what evidence would test it.
Play a card sort with hazard graphs, resource maps, and migration claims; students match each claim to supporting data or label it unsupported.
Bring a local water utility report and ask students to mark one supply concern and one claim about residents it cannot support.
Free download
Printable ENV.4.2 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to ENV.4.2, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.
Download the worksheetKeep exploring
Related Standards
- ESS.4.2
Research, assess, and communicate how Earth’s systems influence the distribution of life, including how various natural hazards and geologic events (e.g., volca...
- ENV.1.8
Utilize data to communicate changes within a given population and the environmental factors that may have impacted these changes (e.g., weather patterns, natura...
- E.3.10.3
Use maps and historical information to identify natural resources in the state connecting (a) how resources are used for human needs and (b) how the use of thos...
- E.4.9C.1
Analyze and interpret data to describe (i.e., NASA, NOAA, USGS) and predict how natural processes (e.g., weathering, erosion, deposition, earthquakes, tsunamis,...
Turn this exact standard into a lesson
Grade, subject, topic, and the complete standard are prefilled. Create one free, no account needed.
Also for this standard:Make a WorksheetMake a QuizMake a Sub Lesson