SCARCE

Ideas from Other Teachers...

Make it into a Story

I have taught two days on Watershed's prior to using the model. One of those days the students made a map of US watersheds. Yesterday I had important points on the board, we openned with a short discussion and Q&A. Then yesterday I used the model for 30 minutes of class telling a story about one of the people who moved into one of the houses and was brand new to town.

After she sent her husband off to work and her children off to school she decided to take a drive around and explore her new town. This is what she found! As I came to each section I had the children put the contaminant onto the model. Then we had a gentle all day rain, 4 volunteers with spray bottles misting. Then we had a storm, four more volunteers and spray bottles create a storm. Then we were silent and stepped back and surveyed the damage. The impact on them was incredible. It surprised even me. They were especially concerned one period when the storm moved the lady's car onto the lawn and into the side of her house! We then discussed the results of the pollution moving into the body of water. I showed the Streamkeepers video for the last fifteen minutes of class, cleaned up the model during that time, refilled things and did it again for the next class. Needless to say I was exhausted last night. today we are going to work with how we could have stopped some of that from happening, using pieces in different ways on a dry model. We will aslo watch the frogline video today and I have made a worksheet for homework tonight. thanks for everything! I loved it, although I was anxious about the whole thing on Tuesday! Chris