Curriculum Filter Results

Bathymetry of the Great Lakes

This document (attached) will help your students explore bathymetric maps of the Great Lakes! There are a few instructions on how to get things set up for the students to explore (it's easy, I promise!) but after that the students can explore the Great Lakes. Also check out the Great Lakes Tour via Google Earth!

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Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
1. The Great Lakes, bodies of fresh water with many features, are connected to each other and to the world ocean.
2. Natural forces formed the Great Lakes; the lakes continue to shape the features of their watershed.

Can a fish pay for your college education?

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.

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Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
3. The Great Lakes influence local and regional weather and climate.
4. Water makes Earth habitable; fresh water sustains life on land. :
5. The Great Lakes support a broad diversity of life and ecosystems.
6. The Great Lakes and humans in their watersheds are inextricably interconnected.
8. The Great Lakes are socially, economically, and environmentally significant to the region, the nation and the planet.

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.

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Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
5. The Great Lakes support a broad diversity of life and ecosystems.
6. The Great Lakes and humans in their watersheds are inextricably interconnected.

Data Table Worksheet

Attached is a student copy and teacher copy of a short assignment students can do to understand how to (and where to) enter data in a data table. There are five "journal entries" from two "scientists" that are studying Otter River. Students will use the journal entries to enter data into the table at the bottom of the page.

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Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
4. Water makes Earth habitable; fresh water sustains life on land. :

Flooded! Using data to understand a changing Lake Superior

Did you wake up in July of 2016 during a thunderstorm and the next morning see images of flooded Wisconsin rivers in the news? Floods like these could have a big impact on the Lake Superior of the future. Take a look at play-by-play data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Park Service and US Geological Survey to help you and your students make sense of big picture impacts to our watershed and our communities. The Curriculum download is a PDF of the lesson plan. The Supporting File is a PDF containing the data packets, prediction tables, and associated student worksheets.

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Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
2. Natural forces formed the Great Lakes; the lakes continue to shape the features of their watershed.
3. The Great Lakes influence local and regional weather and climate.
6. The Great Lakes and humans in their watersheds are inextricably interconnected.

Game of Survival: Fish Style!

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.

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Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
4. Water makes Earth habitable; fresh water sustains life on land. :
5. The Great Lakes support a broad diversity of life and ecosystems.

Google Lit Trips!

Attached is a step by step on how to download files that you can open in Google Earth that go through the places the characters a number of books go! From "Paddle to the Sea" to "Number the Stars", there's a map to explore!

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Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
6. The Great Lakes and humans in their watersheds are inextricably interconnected.
8. The Great Lakes are socially, economically, and environmentally significant to the region, the nation and the planet.

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.

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Subject Areas: ,
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Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
1. The Great Lakes, bodies of fresh water with many features, are connected to each other and to the world ocean.
2. Natural forces formed the Great Lakes; the lakes continue to shape the features of their watershed.
4. Water makes Earth habitable; fresh water sustains life on land. :
6. The Great Lakes and humans in their watersheds are inextricably interconnected.

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!

Details

Subject Areas:
Grade Levels: , ,
Topics: , , ,

Great Lakes Literacy Principles:
1. The Great Lakes, bodies of fresh water with many features, are connected to each other and to the world ocean.
2. Natural forces formed the Great Lakes; the lakes continue to shape the features of their watershed.
4. Water makes Earth habitable; fresh water sustains life on land. :
6. The Great Lakes and humans in their watersheds are inextricably interconnected.