As Vice President, Al Gore, suggests in “
Earth in the Balance/Ecology and the Human Spirit
”, the Earth still remains more or less in balance. Whether that balance can be maintained and the health of our planet improved depends, to a large extent, on how well we communicate our conservation message and motivate others to act.
Some people think the levels of carbon monoxide in our atmosphere are too high. They are afraid Earth’s temperature will rise, making it unhealthy for life. Health specialists say that carbon monoxide reduces the blood’s ability to deliver oxygen to vital tissues, affecting primarily the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Lower concentrations have been shown to adversely affect individuals with heart disease and to decrease maximal exercise performance in young people. Higher concentrations above the national standards can cause symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, and fatigue.
Carbon monoxide is an odorless and colorless gas produced by incomplete burning of carbon-based fuels, including gasoline, oil and wood. Carbon monoxide is also produced from incomplete combustion of many natural and synthetic (man-made) products. For instance, cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide. Automobiles, buses, trucks, small engines, and some industrial processes produce carbon monoxide. High concentrations can be found in confined spaces like parking garages, poorly ventilated tunnels, or along roadsides during periods of heavy traffic.
Lead is a metal that occurs naturally in soil, rocks , water, and food. Normally, only a small fraction of the lead we are exposed to comes from breathing air that contains lead. Most lead to which humans are exposed is ingested in food. However, because lead particles in air are so small, as much as 50% of the lead that is inhaled is retained in the body.
Lead is a hazardous substance. Elevated levels above the national standard can adversely affect psychological development and performance, kidney function, and blood chemistry. Young children are particularly at risk due to increased sensitivity of young tissues and organs.
The primary sources of lead in Connecticut and the United States have been emissions form lead smelters, battery plants, and automobiles burning gasoline with lead additives. Transportation sources alone historically contributed about 80% of the annual emissions on a national basis.
When it was determined that lead levels in the United States were too high and might contriute to heablth problems, environmental agencies took steps to eliminate lead poisoning and pollution. For instance, now we use unleaded gasoline or alternative fuels in our automobiles. Gasoline with added lead can no longer be purchased as an automotive fuel in the United States. This has had an effect in Connecticut.
In order to measure metals like lead in air, dust and other pollutants’ particles are collectd on filter peaper for 24 hours. The filter paper is then analyzed in a laboratory to see what metals it contains. The State of Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Air Monitoring Section samples lead to identify areas of the state where lead levels might be too high.
Lead levels exceeded the acceptable levels established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the 1990’s and early 1980’s. Lead levels have exceeded the standard even more recently. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards for lead require that the average lead concentration at a site not exceed 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter during any calendar quarter.
Most of today’s students consider themselves environmentalists because they want to pass on a clean, green legacy to their descendants. Most of them know that conserving our natural resources and preserving what is left of our natural world make sense ethically and economically. Protecting our air, land and water not only helps to safeguard all life, it creates and sustains more jobs than it eliminates. Protecting our natural heritage is not only good for wildlife and campers, it is good for our economy as well.
My hope is that
The Environment Around Me
will become an invaluable aid for motivating students. It will provide clear guidelines and procedures for involving these students in significant learning experiences in research and high level thinking skills, while not neglecting challenging learning experiences within the basic disciplines of mathematics, science, reading, and writing. The approach is one that engages the interests of students at a deep level.
Students will learn how to carry out research and will develop independent learning skills through the program of studies presented in
The Environment Around Me
. Success in independent study and research, as well as effective use of libraries and other information resources is not simply the product of trial-and error activity in school. It is the are product of teacher guidance and stimulation, along with instructional materials and methods and of an overall system which provides the requisite skills and develops the appropriate attitudes.
Yet, our earth continues to be stressed by growing numbers of people consuming a limited amount of resources. In this country, a small but exceedingly powerful lobby of real estate, grazing, mining, logging, off-road vehicle, and other high-impact interests demands carte blanche to do as they please with the nation’s diminishing resources. These well-organized forces pretend to represent balance and moderation. They portray themselves as defenders of our Constitution, as champions of our property rights, as advocates for the people-aligned against the special interests of elitist environmental groups. All too often, they succeed in projecting this false image.
How can they get away with it? Quite simply, they succeed in selling their misleading message because they are sharply focused and highly motivated and because they have access to the best communications talent that money can buy.
Meanwhile, student environmentalists have not been nearly as savvy about communicating our message. Time after time students have failed to get the word out, often with tragic results. The cause of environmental protection is as American as baseball, yet we frequently end up not playing baseball.
The student’s opponents have the power of many and all of the high-priced expertise and political influence that comes with it. But the students have something even more powerful - the power of people, a growing number of people who care about the future of our land and our communities. With better communication skills, students can mobilize this support for whatever it is students are determined to save, improve, restore, and sustain.
This curriculum does not presume to suggest what the students environmental message should be. What do students say about air, soil, and water pollution? What you will find in this curriculum are the fundamental principles that will enable students to convey their message more effectively.
This curriculum presents students with a variety of research problems that each student will attempt to solve. Students will use writing skills to solve problems that are developmentally appropriate. Students will acquire the skills used to examine data and to process ways of analyzing the data in order to write about it. Consequently, writing and problem-solving abilities of the students will improve as they practice multiple approaches (newsletter/brochure) to the problem.
Students will experience writing using the scientific method, solving problems to the best of their ability, and analyzing old and new information. They will receive a variety of guided explanations and demonstrations on problem-solving, along with reviewing basic language skills. They will learn to monitor their own progress.
Students will work in cooperative groups as cooperative groups play an important role in school and outside of school. Students will interact and work in small groups throughout each of the activities. Team building and cooperation are important skills that students will need in todays world. For some students, working with others will be a new experience. The expected outcome is the development of the skills needed for collaboration, such as respect for others ideas.
As students are working in groups, sharing and listening to others becomes the key to successful mathematical/ scientific decision-making. Each student has a role in the group, such as recorder or materials manager, so that they become responsible for their own learning. Students assume new roles as they change activities so that each group member has an opportunity to fill each role. The teacher’s role will be that of facilitator. This task includes listening and effective questioning to help students stay on, or get themselves back on, track.
As students interpret data, discuss and support approaches to problems, read blueprints, write reports, defend solutions, and draw conclusions, the levels of proficiency among students will vary . To foster participation and effective communication by all students, therefore, the teacher must try to obtain an assessment of the students’ communication skills. This can be accomplished by listening to the students as they talk about and interpret the problem at hand. Who is having difficulties understanding the requirements? Which students cannot identify and explain the components and objectives of the activity?
Overall,
The Environment Around Me
is a curriculum designed to promote research. Research is sometimes not given enough emphasis in learning activities. Yet, as students get older, many teachers require the use of research skills for project work. Research skills are to a motivated learner what batting and catching skills are to a gifted baseball player — the means to an end. How else is a ballplayer to play? How else is a student to learn? This curriculum utilizes basic skills, the fundamentals that make it possible to be an independent learner.
In this rapidly changing world, students need to have the ability to think critically, solve problems, make decisions and communicate their ideas to others. One purpose of
The Environment Around Me
is to assess students’ ability to apply these skills in a realistic manner within an interdisciplinary context. This curriculum will help students develop skills tested in the CAPT Mathematics, and Interdisciplinary Assessment.
In the Interdisciplinary Assessment students use knowledge and skills they have gained through their social studies, science, mathematics, language arts and other classes. Students are presented with several resources (e.g., newspaper or magazine articles, government documents, editorials, political cartoons, maps, charts or graphs) related to a significant issue. Students begin with a brief group discussion. The purpose of this collaborative activity is to give students the opportunity to begin thinking about the topic and to share their ideas with others before starting the task.
Students work independently for the remainder of the interdisciplinary task. They are asked to read the source materials to gain information about the topic and to consider various perspectives on the issue. Students are provided with graphic organizers and scratch paper for notes.
Students are then asked to use the information they have gained from their readings, as well as their prior knowledge, to take a position on the issue. They prepare a writing draft stating and supporting their position, using information from the source materials. For example, students may be asked to draft a letter to their congressperson, or to prepare an editorial for a newspaper attempting to persuade the audience to adopt a particular position.
Environmental science comprises those disciplines that consider the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of the environment. Like the earth and life sciences, it transcends disciplinary boundaries and is concerned with the interactions among processes-each of which is best described by a particular discipline. It is the study of natural cycles, systems, and their components.
Environmentalism and environmental science are distinct. The former is a popular movement with political, social, and philosophical implications. The latter provides a means for obtaining precise information about the environment, in order to better understand it. The two connect, and many environmental scientists are as concerned about damage to the environment as campaigning environmentalists.
Environmental science embraces all those disciplines which are concerned with the physical, chemical, and biological surroundings in which organisms live. Environmental science draws heavily on aspects of the living organisms, life and earth sciences, but there is some unavoidable overlapping in all of these groupings.
Any study of the earth and the life it supports must deal with process and change. The earth and life sciences also deal with process and change, but environmental science is especially concerned with changes wrought by human activities, and their immediate and long-term implication for the welfare of living organisms, including humans.
Environmental science acquires political overtones and leads to controversy. If it suggests that a particular activity is harmful, then modification of the activity may require national legislation. Almost certainly, there will be an economic price that not everyone will have to pay or pay equally. We may all be environmental winners in the long term, but in the short term, there will be financial losers and, not surprisingly, they will complain.
Over the last thirty years or so, we have grown anxious about the condition of the natural environment and increasingly determined to minimize avoidable damage to it. In most countries, there is now a legal requirement for those who propose any major development project to calculate its environmental consequences, and the resulting environmental impact. This assessment is taken into account when deciding whether to permit work to proceed.
Certain activities are forbidden on environmental grounds, by granting protection to particular areas, although such protection is rarely absolute. It follows that people engaged in the construction, extraction, manufacturing, power-generating or power-distributing, agricultural, forestry, or distributive industries are increasingly expected to predict and take responsibility for the environmental effects of their activities. They should have at least a general understanding of environmental science and its application. For this reason, many courses in planning and industrial management now include an environmental science component.
The study of the environment requires a working knowledge of words and terms that may be unfamiliar to students.
The Environment Around Me
introduces vocabulary terms only when they are essential to the key concept or principle in each activity. Activities generally have between four and ten new terms. In this way, students are introduced to important terms and develop a working environmental vocabulary.
Each term can be introduced before the activity under some heading. The terms can be phonetically respelled and defined. Within the activities, the environmental terms can be boldfaced, or underlined, phonetically respelled and defined in context. Students are thus provided with a preview of terms.
Recognizing the importance of vocabulary skills development is important. Vocabulary skills, such as using prefixes, suffixes, and root words; identifying word origins and so on, are reinforced in
The Environment Around Me
. Exercises also stress word relationships and applying definitions.
The emphasis on environmental process skills and their relationship to mathematics and scientific methods has become an integral part of environmental teaching pedagogy. The implementation of mathematics and science process skills and methods is a unique and important feature of
The Environment Around Me
.
Writing is important to all academic disciplines. Writing involves a number of skills, including the ability to collect information, to analyze information, and to organize the information. Writing involves formulating ideas and sequencing relationships, drafting, ordering, articulating paragraphs, and polishing written materials to reach a final draft.
The Environment Around Me
enhances writing competence by correlating writing activities to the scientific activities. In this way, reading and writing complement each other. Challenge features, such as research skills and information search encourage students to read and write about various topics. Research skills also stress the application of science, mathematics and scientific skills and processes, while providing students with practice that combines reading, writing, and communication information to another person in a clear, concise way.
The Environment Around Me!
can be used in many ways. The lessons and the overall design of the curriculum lead to a variety of applications, such as basic skill activities, full-class units or courses, small-group lessons, independent study, and even curriculum development. Regardless of how
The Environment Around Me
is to be implemented, it is important to understand its organization and recognize what it provides. Like a good cookbook, this curriculum supplies more than a list of ingredients. It offers suggestions, advice, and hints; provides organization and structure; and gives time lines, handouts, and materials lists. In other words, it supplies everything necessary for you to conduct the projects.
The Environment Around Me
was produced with the teacher in mind. Every research project is divided into three general sections to provide uniformity throughout the curriculum and to give each component a standard placement in the material. The first section, “Teacher Preview”, gives a brief overview of the scope and focus of the research project. The second section, “Lesson Plans and Notes”, outlines a detailed, description. After reading this, every nuance of the project should be understood. The third section, Instructional Materials, supplies the “nuts-and-bolts” of the project -reproducible assignment sheets, instructional handouts, test, answer sheets, and evaluations.
