Teaching Tools: Math & Science (Charles River)
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Transportation Log (greenteacher.com)
Many of the toxic metals and compounds in the Charles River are transportation-related. Many polluting metals and petroleum-based contaminants have washed off local roadways during rainstorms and snowmelt events (stormwater runoff).
Ask students to collect data for one week on their families' transportation habits by creating and completing a transportation log. (Don’t forget walking and bicycling.) Record the kinds, lengths and purposes of trips, fuel used, potential alternative modes of transportation, and any other information deemed important.
Have students analyze and graph the collected data. Discuss ways that students and their families can reduce vehicle emissions and vehicle use in general. Students may wish to publish a list of "Charles River Transportation Tips" and distribute it to their families, and other interested parties.
Dehydration (greenteacher.com)
In many parts of the world, contaminated water sources result in disease that can lead to dehydration. The following activities demonstrate dehydration:
a) Place slices of fresh fruit or potato on a sheet of paper and trace their shape. Thread string through the pieces and hang them up to dry for a day or two. Retrace the shapes and compare to the original. Put the slices into water and observe what happens.
b) Place two potted plants side by side, but water only one of them. After a few weeks, observe the results.
c) In many cases, UNICEF reports, dehydration in humans can be prevented with a simple solution of 20 g sugar, 3.5 g salt and 2.5 g baking soda mixed in one liter of clean water. Have students prepare and taste this solution.
Discuss the importance of clean water in light of the student’s observations. Ask the students discuss whether nearby water sources, like the upper Charles, are drinkable, or should be.
In My Face (greenteacher.com)
A limiting factor for many animals is their psychological need for space. For example, large predators such as wolves or grizzly bears will abandon acceptable habitat because they cannot meet their need for adequate space.
Have the students get into pairs, and ask them to stand facing each other as they discuss the answer to the following question: "Why do animals need space?" After a minute, tell the students to freeze, and ask them to estimate how far apart their feet are from each other. Next, ask them to move closer so that their feet are only half as far apart (alternatively, ask them to stand so that their toes are touching) and to resume their conversation. This may be a little disconcerting to the students! In the discussion that follows ask the students if they, too, have a psychological need for space. Being crowded into a smaller area than we are used to increases our stress level.
Or, cordon off half of the classroom before the students arrive; you may wish to put up a large and enigmatic sign that simply states, "This area slated for development." Have the students find a new place in the now-crowded half of the classroom, and ask them to comment on the situation. This is exactly analogous to what happens when animals lose habitat due to development along the Charles River: they cannot tolerate the higher stress that results, and so they travel in search of new territory that they don't usually find.
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Teaching Tools: Math & Science (Lake Champlain)
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These activities may be adapted for any grade level:
Where Does it Go? (greenteacher.com)
Ask students what happens to the used water and sewage from their homes, and have several students research where sewage from the school goes, how it is treated and where it is eventually released. Discuss why raw sewage is dangerous in aquatic ecosystems: suspended solids prevent sunlight from reaching underwater plants and may smother organisms living on the bottom; bacteria can accumulate in aquatic creatures, diminish oxygen supplies and make water unsafe for humans. High nutrient levels can cause algae blooms.
Introduce the concepts of primary, secondary and tertiary treatment of wastewater. Visit your local wastewater treatment plant, or obtain information about local treatment systems from the municipality. Have groups of students research and present one of the main steps of primary treatment, and discuss how each step reduces environmental danger to Lake Champlain. Brainstorm actions for reducing the amount of wastewater and sewage we produce.
Water Hazards (greenteacher.com)
Fill a large jar with water. Ask students to brainstorm and record ways water might become polluted. With each suggestion, add mock pollutants (crushed charcoal, ink, vinegar, etc.) to the jar. Stir the mixture to simulate the effects of wind, currents and tides. Classify the types of pollutants: for example, industrial waste, chemical or petroleum spills, acid rain, storm-water discharge, toxic chemicals from urban or agricultural runoff. Have students research local sources of household and industrial pollution, what is being done about it and ways it can be minimized.
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Liquid Math
There are 6.8 trillion gallons of water in Lake Champlain. Based on this one fact, have students research the answers to the following questions:
How many Olympic-sized swimming pools (164 ft X 9.8 ft X 82 ft) would this fill?
If the State of Vermont (land area 9,250 square miles) were flat, to what depth could this volume of water cover it?
If 56 percent of the Lake Champlain Drainage Basin is in Vermont, 37 percent is in New York, and 7 percent is in the Province of Quebec, how many gallons are "contributed" by each state/province?
Many communities get their drinking water from Lake Champlain. If the average kitchen faucet delivers three gallons per minute, how long would you need to leave the water running to drain Lake Champlain dry (assuming no new water entered the Lake)?
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Teaching Tools: Math & Science (Hudson River)
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| photo: Christopher Swain |
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Homes and Habitats (greenteacher.com)
Discuss with students what their basic needs are. The basic needs of all living organisms are food, shelter and water. Have the students draw a picture of their home, showing where food, water and shelter are available. Tell students that if their home loses any one of these things (for example, if there were no more food), then they wouldn't be able to live in their homes any more.
Now have students choose a Hudson Valley animal that they like. Help them to identify the food, water and shelter that this animal needs. Ask them to draw a picture showing these features and to post this drawing beside the one they made in "What's in Your Home?" to show them how much they have in common with the animal they draw. The term used to describe an animal's home is habitat; ask the students to label their diagrams accordingly.
Food Logs (greenteacher.com)
Have students complete a daily food log for one week in which they record all the food they eat. The combined results can be collated and graphed. Have students determine what proportion of the foods they eat satisfy the "5 Ns": what is needed, natural, now in season, near home, and naked (requiring little or no packaging). Be sure to discuss the impacts of organic food vs. conventional food on local air and water quality.
Cookie Mining (greenteacher.com)
Students investigate the effect that extraction of energy resources can have on the environment. Give students toothpicks to use as drills, a chocolate-chip cookie each, a paper towel and a task sheet. Their task is to 'mine' chocolate chips, representing iron or garnet or titanium or lead (all mined in the Hudson Valley), out of the cookie. Have them trace their cookie, then write some words that best describe it. At your signal, have them start mining. Stop after two minutes and ask them to draw their cookie. What words would they use to describe it now? Discuss these questions: how did the mining affect the environment of your cookie? Can you fix your cookie, making it the same as before? How do you think real mining can affect the environment? Have them repeat the exercise with the intent of mining responsibly. What did they notice? Did they get as many chips? How would this approach relate to real mining? What recommendations might they make to industry? Have the students study before and after pictures of a mined terrain and ask them how the land has been altered. Ask what implications this has for animals, vegetation and water. Invite a mining representative to discuss what's being done to protect the environment. Take a field trip to a mine, if possible.
Energy Diet (greenteacher.com)
Ask students to survey the number of electric appliances used over a specified one-hour period in their homes. Have them record the frequency and length of time the appliance is used. Using the class totals, prepare a large bar graph of appliance type vs. frequency of use. Have the students estimate the number of hours each appliance is used in the average home per month, or get averages from their local power utility. Ask them to research the average energy needed to run each appliance (check the wattage rating on the appliance tag), then multiply by the hours per month and divide by 1,000 to get the kilowatt-hours (kWh) used in a month. Have them multiply each kWh by your local utility's cost factor to get the cost of running that appliance every month. (Have them ask their parents to help them find this on their electric bill at home.) Repeat for each appliance, and then calculate the class total for a year. Analyze and discuss the results. Which appliances are used most? Least? Which consume the most energy? What is the environmental impact? What lifestyle choices do their figures show? What are their alternatives?
An alternate approach: have children write to the local electric utility and request a percentage breakdown of their “mix” of power, i.e., what percentage is from fossil fuels, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc. Discuss the impacts of each of these sources of electricity on the Hudson River.
Water, Water Everywhere (greenteacher.com)
An understanding of sustainability requires an appreciation of the finite nature of our planet. Since water is assumed to be an abundant resource, it provides an excellent illustration of the dangers of the cornucopia mindset. Have students examine a map or globe and note the relative amounts of land and water on "planet water." Using a ten- gallon aquarium to represent the water of the world, proceed to remove various amounts of water because they are salty, polluted, or inaccessible (97.1% oceans, 2.2% polar ice, 0.3% deep ground water, 0.1% saltwater lakes, soil and atmospheric moisture, glaciers). On completion of the exercise, approximately ten drops of water, representing the world's total usable water supply, are left in the aquarium.
Ecosystem Tags (greenteacher.com)
Have students prepare a number of 5 cm square cards with a labeled drawing of a living or non-living thing from a forest ecosystem: examples include a rock, sun, tree, flower, bee, ant, woodpecker, deer, coyote, human. You may wish to laminate these cards to ensure their longevity. Next, have students put a strip of masking tape on the back of their ecosystem tag and affix their tag to the forehead of another student without them seeing what it is. The students then have to mingle with their peers to guess what feature is on their forehead sign. You may wish to allow them each only two guesses; other techniques include allowing sign language only, or permitting students to ask only questions that can be answered by a yes or a no. The game ends when everyone identifies their ecosystem tag; debrief with the students to ensure that they understand the role of their tag in the ecosystem. (There’s more: see “energy web” for a follow-up exercise.)
Energy Web (Web of Life) (greenteacher.com)
This activity is designed to immediately follow Ecosystem Tags. Students sit in a circle on the floor in a group of 10-15. Starting arbitrarily with one student, ask them to roll a ball of twine across the floor to another character that they either give energy to or get energy from (for example, a snowshoe hare could roll it to a coyote or to a blade of grass). Have the students justify their decisions to the group as they roll the string. Continue the activity until all of the characters are connected by the ball of string; point out that this "web of life" is an accurate analogy to the invisible web that connects all living and non-living components of an ecosystem. Then start to show how changes to any one part of the ecosystem soon affect the other parts. In our example of the snowshoe hare, ask the students to pretend that humans have come into the forest and hunted almost all the snowshoe hares. To reflect this, first have the students take up all the slack in the string; then have the snowshoe hare drop its string, and ask the other participants if they felt a change in the tension. Both the grass and the coyote will immediately feel this. A decrease in the number of hares is bad for the coyote, which relies on hares as food, but good for the grass, which can now grow profusely. Have these affected characters in turn drop their string, and observe how the "snowshoe hare effect" rapidly spreads throughout the ecosystem.
The World in an Apple: Topsoil exercise (greenteacher.com)
This exercise using an apple illustrates our dependency on the biosphere. Slice an apple representing the earth into quarters. Set aside three quarters to represent the oceans. Slice the remaining quarter into two pieces and dispose of one of the pieces representing the land that is inhospitable for people. The remaining 1/8 represents the land where people live, but not all of which may grow the foods needed for life. Slice the remaining 1/8 into four sections and set aside three of the sections. These represent areas too rocky, too steep, or too cold to produce food. Carefully peel the remaining 1/32 slice of the earth. This represents the surface, the very thin skin of the earth's crust, or topsoil upon which humanity depends. It is less than five feet deep and is capable of producing a relatively fixed amount of food. Due to erosion and over farming, we lose 24 billion tons of it per year. Remind students that it typically takes hundreds of years for one inch of topsoil to form.
Hydropower (greenteacher.com)
Hydropower is energy that comes from the force of moving water. Electricity that is generated from waterpower is called hydroelectric power. A typical hydropower plant is a system with at least three parts: an electric plant, a dam and a reservoir. Have students contact a local utility to inquire about the process of making electricity through hydropower. Further research should highlight: What role has hydropower played in electricity production in North America, past and present? How does hydropower affect the fisheries and ecosystems? How does the creation of a storage reservoir affect people who live on the riverbanks? What is a low head dam? A high head dam? Have students prepare a short report with their findings and share their information with the rest of their class.
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