Utilizing the Lake Superior watershed and the St. Louis River as a foundation for learning
Acorn Naturalists is a great spot to find supplies for outdoor education and water quality monitoring.
Link: www.acornnaturalists.com
This is an excellent resource to use when teaching about wild rice. The graphic is clickable and full of great information.
Climate Wisconsin features short engaging stories of a climate change in the Upper Great Lakes. All stories are supported by research conducted during the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts. Background essays and teaching tips help you bring easily relate-able video stories into your classroom.
Link: www.climatewisconsin.org
Link: https://earthpartnership.wisc.edu/curriculum/
“Estuaries.noaa.gov helps educators bring the beauty and the importance of estuaries into classrooms and educational programs. This site provides, primarily, an avenue for elementary, middle and high school students, and their teachers, to learn more about estuaries, research, and explore NOAA’s “living laboratories” – the National Estuarine Research Reserves.”
Features include current content, real-time data, FREE online curriculum, live broadcasts and a video collection, resources, a glossary, and are recommended for teachers, students, and anyone interested in estuaries and coastal issues.
Link: www.coast.noaa.gov/estuaries/
Link: estuaries.noaa.gov/
Check out the Great Lakes Aquarium online education resources to find free kits to check out, professional development opportunities, and information on field trips.
Link: www.glaquarium.org/education-programs/
The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (or GLIFWC) represents eleven Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan who reserved hunting, fishing and gathering rights through treaties. They offer excellent educational materials, many of which are free.
Link: www.glifwc.org/publications/index.html
“Understanding the Great Lakes influence on you and your influence on the Great Lakes.”
This website uses 8 principles to explain the importance of the Great Lakes. There are numerous resources for each principle to help educators implement them into their classrooms. Resources include complete lesson plans and information to enrich the activities.
Link: www.cgll.org/for-educators/great-lakes-literacy-principles/
“Duluth, Minnesota lies at the western end of Lake Superior, the source and headwaters of the entire Laurentian Great Lakes ecosystem. Although perhaps better known for extremely cold winters, residents and visitors know it to be a city of forested hills, wetlands and trout streams. With 42 named streams, Duluth has one of the highest densities of stream corridors of any of the over 150 EMPACT- metro areas.”
This website offers real time data bringing the streams to life, information on Lake Superior Communities, storm water, citizen and school involvement, and the importance of water quality and watersheds.
Link: www.lakesuperiorstreams.org/
“The Leaf Pack Network is an international network of teachers, students, and citizen monitors investigating their local stream ecosystems. Through the Leaf Pack Experiment, monitors use tree leaves and aquatic insects to determine the health of their stream and to understand its ecology.
Individuals participating in the Leaf Pack Experiment and Leaf Pack Network engage in the full process of designing an experiment, conducting research, and communicating their results. Leaf Pack can be easily implemented in any curriculum and fulfills many state and national science standards.”
Minnesota Sea Grant offers frequent professional development opportunities as well as kits to use in your classroom, and a range of Lake Superior resources to purchase or borrow.
Link: www.seagrant.umn.edu
“NOAA’s National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) acknowledges the importance of both long-term environmental monitoring programs and data and information dissemination through the support of the NERRS System-wide Monitoring Program (SWMP). The goal of the SWMP is to “identify and track short-term variability and long-term changes in the integrity and biodiversity of representative estuarine ecosystems and coastal watersheds for the purpose of contributing to effective national, regional and site specific coastal zone management”.”
This website is home to real-time data for the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve’s monitoring stations. The three stations are located at the Oliver Bridge on the St. Louis River, the LSNERR’ sentinel site in Pokegama Bay, and at Barker’s Island on the St. Louis River.
Link: cdmo.baruch.sc.edu/get/realTime.cfm
Printable ledger paper sized (11″ x 17″) full color, satellite image of the St. Louis River Estuary.
“Explore the stories of the Estuary through the eyes of people that live and work here, and delve into the science of interplay between humans and ecosystems. Challenge yourself with real-world Geoquests or see how Deep Maps capture the beauty and complexity of this special place.”
This website has a deep map to discover the estuary and has Geoquests people can go on to explore the cities of Duluth and Superior. It focuses on fishing, community, exploration, shipping and ricing. Each focus includes personal stories from community members in the estuary.
Link: stlouisriverestuary.org
Link: www.stlouisestuary.org/
“Welcome to Great Lakes Lessons! This website features a suite of lessons, activities and data sets all focused on various scientific aspects of the Great Lakes. Throughout the website, you will find usable data sets, an overview of teaching methods, and ready-to-go lessons and activities. Any of these resources may be easily incorporated into formal and informal educational settings and many are multidisciplinary. All the lessons, activities, teacher tools and data sets are free.”
All lessons are fully developed and read to use. They have clear learning objectives, background information, and complete hands-on learning activities making it easy for any educator to implement these in their classroom or outside. Use these lessons to enrich already existing curriculum and subject matter.
Link: www.greatlakeslessons.com/
The Ways is a series of personal stories from Native communities around the central Great Lakes. This online resource features videos, digital media and interactive maps exploring Native culture and language. Stories featuring Lake Superior fishing and wild rice relate closely to the St. Louis River Estuary.
Link: http://theways.org/
“Model My Watershed is a watershed-modeling web app that enables citizens, conservation practitioners, municipal decision-makers, educators, and students to
“Celebrating Historic Duluth, Western Lake Superior, and Minnesota’s Arrowhead”
This website has many resources about the surrounding area of the estuary. It includes a large historical archive, books about the area, resources for readers, and articles from a history magazine.
Link: www.zenithcity.com/