Construct a Cell
Students will gather items they can find in nature to put as parts in a cell. The catch is that students must explain why that item represents the cell organelle by using metaphors, similes, or other explanations. Prerequisite: Students must have a firm understanding of cell parts and functions. This lesson would be great as a unit wrap-up lesson. An example would be that an acorn could represent a vesicle because it transports seeds to other places in a protective casing like a vesicle transports proteins in a cell.
Online Resources for Data, Kits, Information and More!
The curriculum attached is actually a list of websites you can find useful for you and your students. Some of the websites will give you access to data that you can give to your students, other websites (like the WI DNR EEK!! website) provides information that your students can use (and is age appropriate for elementary/middle school). Other websites provide great kits or other resources.
Keep the Water Clean!
Students will learn about different types of pollution that can be present in water, ways those types of pollution can be handled, what Areas of Concerns are, and what can be done to clean up (and keep clean) Areas of Concerns in the St. Louis River Estuary.
Making a Watershed!
This lesson outline and PowerPoint guide you and your students through learning about watersheds by making your own! Students will make their own landscape and hypothesize where water and land are on their landscape. They can add places of human activity and predict what will happen to their watershed when it "rains"! This is a fun, short activity that can be extended to emphasize key ideas. The Enviroscape from the Great Lakes Aquarium is optional but very useful for this lesson!
Thompson Reservoir Investigation Lesson
Attached is a lesson plan and worksheet for investigating Thompson Reservoir. This will prepare students for a more detailed chemistry investigation by gathering a physical inventory of the Reservoir and a chance to experience a virtual overview of the upstream watershed. The lesson also introduces the study of sediments. Use the curricula titled "Google Earth Tour of the St. Louis River" for the virtual tour. Sediment core is optional.
Google Earth Tour of the Nemadji River
Attached is a Google Earth tour of the Nemadji River
Habitat Scavenger Hunt
A wonderfully crafted scavenger hunt for a no-fail outdoor experience with your students.
Visual Aid: Images of Animals in Hibernation
Take this one-page quality visual aid out with you on your late fall or winter hike. Students will love to look for burrows, dens, scratchings, tracks and traces of animals when outside. Have students make burrows or dens using snow, branches, leaves, or bring a tarp - then they will be able to become animals, imagining a shelter in the woods.
Web Directory: Lake Superior Watershed Research Project
An incomplete list of sources for student research projects.
Visual Aid: Trees that Keep their Leaves
This is a one-pager, student sheet with quality images of cedar, balsam fir, red pine, spruce, and white pine needles for field identification and extension activities. Have students make a display by gathering specimens, researching, or for smaller students, simply writing the names of the trees by the correct images. Regardless, GO OUTSIDE with your students and collect some samples of these trees for your classroom. Tell the Ojibwe oral story that explains this phenomenon.
