The Big Ideas of Sustainability - when we talk about sustainability, especially with young students, it is critical to break out important concepts and ideas to make the word come alive.  Below is a list of a big ideas we use to help frame curriculum, projects, and build student understanding. 

• Ability to make a difference: everyone has the ability to affect change or impact a system, community, self.
• Change over time: all organisms/places/systems are constantly changing. 
• Community: all communities involve nested economic, environmental, and social systems.  We need to understand the interconnections to come up with sustainable solutions.
• Cycles: every organism/system goes through different stages.
• Diversity: systems/places function because of variety.
• Equilibrium: a state of balance.
• Equity/Fairness: resources need to be shared to meet the needs of living things across places and generations.
• Interdependence: all living things are connected.  Every organism/system/place depends on others.
• Limits: every system has a carrying capacity.
• Long-term effects: we can project that actions will have effects beyond immediate reactions.
• Place: natural and human communities together make up one’s place.  Every place has its own needs and limits.
• Systems: elements that affect each other and are connected through larger patterns.

Scope & Sequence of Big Ideas K-12  The Big Ideas lend themselves to curricular inclusion in a variety of ways.  This scope and sequence suggests one possibility of how these big ideas can build upon one another across grade levels.