Utilizing the Lake Superior watershed and the St. Louis River as a foundation for learning
This is a short guide to using measurements to figure out who left that track in the snow.
Wild rice is a keystone species in the ecosystem. If it were removed, many other species would be negatively impacted. In our region, it is being threatened by a number of different factors, a couple of which, purple loosestrife and Canada geese, will be covered in this lesson. Students will act out a small scale ecosystem in order to learn about the issues facing wild rice in our area.
This lesson is a map quest that incorporates maps, land, government, and bodies of water. Using maps and a legend students will discover the different governing entities that are responsible for certain parts of the river and determine if the land is federal, state, city, or tribal.
Students will construct a large map of a place of their choosing. This place will be divided into smaller sections using a string/flag grid system. Each student will take their time to create a map of one portion of the grid to be put together into a larger whole.
Students will learn about the different ways animals survive in the winter through reading about animal adaptations and doing class presentations about some of the animals that live in or near aquatic environments. Students will also have the opportunity to create their own animals and come up with habitats and winter adaptations for those creations.
Students will participate in a hike around their local nature space/place and make observations about what is happening in that natural place. They will try to answer questions like, ‘What is new?’ ‘What is different?’ ‘What has changed?’
Students will observe and investigate the properties of snow and snowflakes as a means to learning about states of matter.
Students will learn about temperature and temperature changes using the Lake Superior thermocline. Concepts and vocabulary covered are: water column, thermocline, metalimnion, epilimnion, hypolimnion, lake turnover, dimictic, and lake stratification.
Students will begin to understand the water cycle by exploring one stage of it, runoff/infiltration.
The emphasis on reading and understanding informational texts in classrooms mirrors our efforts in science at the Lake Superior NERR. These readings are based on real scientific efforts in the Lake Superior Watershed, and include questions to check for understanding. This reading on vernal pools is great for springtime and is derived from an article in the Duluth News Tribune, April 2016.