Utilizing the Lake Superior watershed and the St. Louis River as a foundation for learning
As partners, students will work to understand materials about frogs. Then, partners will be separated to form two groups to play the amphibian trivia game. Students will learn about the importance of amphibians such as frogs as well as how frogs differ from toads. Curriculum download is a brief lesson plan including a reader about amphibians.
This is a short guide to using measurements to figure out what animal may have left a track in the snow. Curriculum download is a PDF version of this tracks worksheet.
There are 5 critters from the Lake Superior watershed just waiting to meet you! A series of characteristics are read aloud, while guesses are taken, then the aquatic vertebrate is revealed. Curriculum download is a PDF version of the clue cards with images that can be printed on the back of the clue cards.
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. Curriculum download is a lesson plan with which to run this lesson.
This lesson will guide students through learning about Lake Whitefish, a valuable fish for commercial fishermen, and how climate and profit impacts fishermen’s livelihood. Students will learn facts about whitefish, learn about local fishing businesses, and apply what they’ve learned using economics to decide whether their business can continue to stay open with different scenarios. Curriculum download is a PDF lesson to run this with your class. Supporting file download is a PDF document with fact cards and question cards all about whitefish and fishing in the region.
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. Curriculum download is a PDF version of the lesson plan. The Supporting File download is a PDF document with cell part labels.
Students will discover the importance of Manoomin to the region and uncover a mystery about who has been eating the wetland plant. The Curriculum download is a PowerPoint slideshow teaching guide that has all the links you need to run the lesson with your class.
Attached are teacher and student copies of a trout and its anatomy. When printed back to back, the copies can be folded so the external anatomy picture can be flipped up to reveal the internal anatomy picture. The Curriculum download is a PDF version of the student copy of the trout anatomy diagram, unlabeled. The Supporting File is a PDF version of the teacher copy of the trout anatomy diagram with labels.
Students will play a game of survival by creating fish with dominant and recessive traits to understand how evolution through adaptations of structures and functions help with survival and continuation of genetic variations. The curriculum download is a PDF of the lesson plan for running this lesson with your students. The supporting file is the student worksheet.
The attachments below are a "student copy" and a "teacher copy" of a guide to each exhibit at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth, MN. One purpose of this resource is as a school research project kick-off for students and their teacher. Another is developing a teaching unit, using student inquiry as your guide. This resource may also be used for digging in deeper to the exhibits through teacher-guided discussion, partner-group discussion, or individual reflection. The curriculum download is a PDF of the 'teacher copy'. The supporting file is a PDF of the 'student copy'.