5th Grade Rain Garden Design Challenge Handouts

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These handouts accompany the 5th Grade Rain Garden Design Challenge Lesson Plan. The handouts give criteria for identifying areas of erosion and non-point source pollution entering waterways on school property, slope and soil suitability criteria for situating the rain garden, and data collection procedures for phosphate testing. The handouts also include guidelines and criteria for the final poster presentation design and Claim-Evidence-Reasoning, as well as rubrics for scoring and guidelines for peer feedback.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Formative Assessment, Interim/Summative Assessment, Learning Task, Lesson Plan, Reference Material, Rubric/Scoring Guide, Unit of Study

Author: Amy Workman

5th Grade Rain Garden Design Challenge Lesson Plan

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This lesson engages 5th grade students in identifying areas of erosion and non-point source pollution entering waterways on school property, making a claim on the most suitable site to locate a rain garden by conducting field tests on slope and soil type, and testing for the presence of phosphates in waterways on school forest property. Students then compete in a rain garden design challenge using their data to create a poster presentation, including a map and claim evidence reasoning, for the best rain garden design plan, scored using a rubric.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Formative Assessment, Interim/Summative Assessment, Lesson Plan, Rubric/Scoring Guide, Unit of Study

Author: Amy Workman

BioBlitz: A Spark for Civic Engagement

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The resources and project outline are the collaborative efforts of the Chain Exploration Center Grades 5 & 6 teachers and a FIELD Edventures educator. The goals of the project were for students to take civic action on environmental issues of local importance. Additionally, the teachers wanted students to become familiar with the four habitat areas, and observable species present in each area.  It was decided that conducting a bioblitz across 4 days–one in each area–would provide students with data that would be the basis for individual and small group investigative questions, issue definition and investigation, and a proposal for conservation, protection, and/or restoration of natural resources, habitats, or species of Wisconsin. Students then presented their proposals to their state senator in a visit to the Wisconsin State Capitol.

Material Type: Unit of Study

Authors: Sandy Benton, Mackenzie Loken, Brianna Hass

Christmas Bird Count

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A pdf file that contains slides with visuals to be shown. It explains the CBC from its beginning to end with an example of Data taken from our local bird count. Students will be instructed to build a data table and graph representing data. Then draw conclusions.

Material Type: Data Set, Lecture Notes

Author: Daniel Rye