The following section outlines some sample activities that can be used in the classroom during the section on watersheds and the various cycles involved. This section provides a brief overview of the activity and resources needed that are useful for supporting student learning in the topics brought out in the section.
Research a Watershed
Students when they come into the class seldom have knowledge of watersheds. Even after learning about the uses of watersheds and the overall benefits, it can still be hard for a student grasp the importance without experiencing it for themselves. For this project, the students will research local watersheds in their area. They will first use a website to locate the watershed for their place of residence. From there, they will document the wildlife that inhabit the area, the different plant life that live in the watershed, and how the houses and surrounding businesses use the watershed.
The students will get the opportunity to explore their local areas and experience how watersheds are connected to their lives.
Building your own watershed
This would be the final project for the unit on watersheds. Over the course of the unit, students would have learned a good number of vocabulary words and important concepts. In addition, they would have seen several examples of watersheds and should be able to identify parts of a watershed. The task has the students designing their own watershed, from the boundaries to the local wildlife. Along with the physical model of the watershed, the students will also be tasked with using 10 or so vocabulary terms to incorporate into their watershed and write a presentation using said words. While a large number of vocabulary words may be available, the students will only need to use a set number of the words. This will increase the likelihood of different projects.
Clean-up a Watershed
As with all of the major units in PhyChem, we aim to improve our environment by learning about the various strategies that have been implemented in the past regarding the subject matter. During the last few sections of my unit, I discussed the environmental impact of our misuse of watersheds; this includes pollution and general mismanagement. For this task, the students will be investigating in depth the different pollutants and human actions that have an adverse effect on our watersheds. They will also be researching methods to reverse the effects of their pollutants or human activity and incorporate those into their final clean up report. The students will be grouped into teams of three or four as they use the internet and other resources for their research. In addition, they will be using their model watershed to illustrate how the pollutants and human activity travel through watershed and the show how their solutions will ultimately improve the health of their watershed.
