“I RECEIVED SOME MATERIAL TO COVER BEFORE THE TRIP. I TAUGHT MY STUDENTS ABOUT BENTHIC MACRO- INVERTEBRATES (BMIS), WHAT THEY LOOKED LIKE, AND HOW WE WERE GOING TO COLLECT AND IDENTIFY THEM. I WON’T LIE… MY STUDENTS WERE DISGUSTED BY THE BUGS THEY SAW AND HEARD ABOUT, BUT I ASSURED THEM THAT IT WOULD BE AN AMAZING EXPERIENCE TO LEARN ABOUT THESE BUGS IN NATURE.”
INTEGRATED LEARNING – IT ALL FLOWS TOGETHER
LANGUAGE ARTS
One of the first things we did as a class once we returned to the school was complete an Adopt-a-BMI sheet. Students researched a BMI of their choice. They applied the con- cepts of voice and perspective writing to cre- ate diary entries from the point-of-view of a BMI. The entries were a fun way to assess my students’ understanding of the impact hu- mans have on water systems and aquatic life.
“Today, there was yet another group of ir- responsible children coming. They did exactly what the children from yesterday did. They destroyed our home. They captured us and put us in tiny compartments…it was horrible and I was really lonely.” – Jenny
“I am very sad humans dump their waste in our water. My family is always sick due to the pollution.” – Steven
The fact that there is less than one per-
cent of accessible freshwater on our earth, and that we are contaminating it caused great concern among my students. They de- cided that they wanted to extend their expe- rience at Highland Creek by raising greater awareness about the choices humans make (personal and industrial) in the use and con- sumption of freshwater sources.
36 ETFO VOICE | SPRING 2016
Students’ desire to raise awareness gave
me the opportunity to integrate Media and Oral Communication by having them cre- ate a Public Service Announcement (PSA) as a cumulative task. My class watched a number of pre-selected examples on You- Tube and co-created learning goals and success criteria for an effective PSA. Break- ing into small groups, they used the knowl- edge obtained from their research to create a PSA about a water issue of their choice (i.e., chemical contamination, overuse, in- adequate supply of safe drinking water in a community, the vulnerability of water systems (i.e., fracking), the impact of the bottled water industry, etc.). I celebrated the students’ hard work by showing a few of their PSAs at school assemblies. Practi- cal suggestions about reducing the amount of water we use/consume were shared with staff and students at that time.
MATH
The children conducted a variety of tests using water samples. They had to record, graph and compare their findings and draw conclusions from them. Students recorded their data on the blackline masters provided by EcoSpark. There was even an online da- tabase that helped calculate and determine the health of a stream based on the BMIs col- lected during the stream study.
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