Lesson Plan: Exploration Of Our School's Backyard

Lesson Plan: Exploration Of Uur School’s Backyard
The reason why I’m doing a lesson on free exploration is because I haven’t given my students time to explore. With this lesson students will be given time to look at plants and other living organisms to bring back to the classroom, and have the opportunity to view their findings under a microscope. It's a structured activity that allows students to explore and find what it is that interests them. Our school's backyard is pretty spacious. There's a trail that leads to a fire-pit that scouts use. The first time I had students explore was last year, but it wasn't planned. One of my students asked me if we will be exploring this year. I decided that I would create a lesson plan to explore the great outdoors.

Grade: 5th

Objective: Students will explore the area around our school to see what type of plants, insects, and other living organisms exist.

Students will record in their journals what they found and where. Was it in a dry area? Was it inside a tree? Was it in a bog?

Suggested Time
Three 1-hour blocks

Multimedia Resources

TD Becoming a mosquito
TD Tree identification
TD People of the Arctic
TD The Spirit of Subsistence Living
ZOOM- counting bugs
How To Use A Microscope Properly

Materials

Plastic container with a lid
Magnifying glass
Journal
Microscope
Pre-made lens of organisms for viewing
Glass jars with punctured lids to let oxygen in
Gummy worms in chocolate cake
Yup'ik Native Nutrition by Mary Gregory


The Lesson

Day 1

On the Promethean, show the web page How To Use A Microscope Properly.
Go over microscope parts, general procedures, and drawing tips. Have the students write down the important information in their journals for future reference.

I will have students view pre-made slides and show them how to use a microscope.

Students will work in pairs taking turns being a recorder and a viewer. The recorder will write down what was seen under the microscope in their journal, while the viewer describes what they see.


Day 2

Watch:
TD Becoming a mosquito
TD Tree Identification

Students go into the backyard of the school to explore. They place objects they want to view under a microscope in a plastic bag. If it’s a living organism, it will be placed in a jar with holes on top, Students are to record in their journals where they found the specimen or plant part.

Day 3

Watch:
Zoom - Counting Bugs
TD People of the Arctic
TD The Spirit of Subsistence Living

Have the students share from their journals their most exciting find. Afterwards, we will celebrate our findings with cake and punch. While the students are having some chocolate cake covered in gummy worms, we will watch TD People of the Arctic, and TD The Spirit of Subsistence Living. Afterward I will read to them Yup'ik Native Nutrition by Mary Gregory, and also share stories with them that my grandparents and parents have told me of how to survive in the wilderness. I"ll ask if they have any stories to share that has been passed down to them.

Blog Reviews

EUUC 58025

I enjoyed reading Kaye Robinson’s blog. She shared her life experiences that connected to each module. For example; getting fresh water (via ice) from the frozen salty sea, the use of black trash bags to sit on while ice fishing to convey how dark colors retain heat.

She also mentioned how the melting of glacial ice is raising the sea level causing devastation to coastal communities. The sea ice that used to protect the coastlines is no longer there which allows waves and currents to go right up to shore.

There was one thing I didn’t agree with. I didn’t agree with her comment; “In the wake of warming trends, traditional knowledge is becoming less reliable.” In the article, Young Alaskan Sees Changing Way of Life, Mathew Gilbert stated; “Native People out there in rural areas of Alaska are year-round observers. If there’s a new plant coming in, or a new animal, they’ll be the first to see it. And they’ll notice subtle things like changes in blueberries, whereas scientists in an office in Fairbanks is not going to notice something like that no matter how good the satellite is.”

I found this article looking through the blogs. This blog belongs to Don Berberich. It’s the other article that I will be reviewing.

If all the world's ice sheets melted, sea level would rise approximately 230 feet. This is a representation of how New York Harbor would look in an ice-free world.
From K. Miller, Rutgers University







Berb’s Blabber

A picture of the Statue of Liberty raising her torch as high as she could to keep it from being enveloped by the ocean made me laugh at first, and I shared it with my husband, but he didn’t laugh. He said it was scary. I had shown him the pictures I had found of Newtok, Alaska earlier that day, and it hit me that it really wasn’t funny since it could become a reality.

Don made a list of several factors that led to the ice age. I was tickled to find I was able to add one factor to his expanded list; microbes! Don stated that it was assumed that warming trends happened over long periods of time but that evidence provided by the study of ice cones show warming trends may have happened abruptly.

This reminded me of the laundromat that was built at my hometown. The engineers assumed that the data used years before was still sufficient since they depended on temperatures staying consistent over time. When the laundromat was build it started shifting due to not installing enough thermosyphons into the ground.

I’m glad I looked at Berb’s Blabber because I found the YouTube Link that I’ve been looking for- Strange fishes after a tsunami!

Module IX How are climate, terrestial ice and Alaskan indigenous cultures all connected?

(Photo by Charles Mason for the New York Times)
Newtok, Alaska, in spring, as viewed from its water tower. Boardwalks squish into the muck in Newtok, which erosion has turned into an island.
On the last module we were concentrating on polar sea-ice and how the diminishing ice-pack is having an effect on the residents and other inhabitants that depended on it.

We are now covering terrestial ice which I’m a little more familiar with. Quinhagak is
surrounded by tons of little lakes. The “Tunnel Man” has an entertaining way of show how the
thawing of the permafrost can be damaging and costly. The water going in through the cracks of the active layer creates an ice wedge. The ice wedge gets bigger when more water goes in and freezes. When a building is constructed on these ice wedges, the building shifts due to the ice wedge melting.

Quinhagak housing are built on piles. Every year the ground thaws and freezes continually, and due to the repeating cycle, the piles slowly rise incrementally. The thawing and freezing of the ground pushes the piles out of the ground raising the houses higher and higher off the ground. My mom used to joke that were going to reach heaven sooner or later at the rate we had to keep adding new stairs onto the existing stairs.

Some of the buildings like the laundromat are sinking into the ground. The area where the building was going to be erected on was evaluated by engineers a couple of years before it was built. Thermosyphons were put into the ground to keep the ground frozen. The builders didn’t put more thermosyphons in because they were expecting normal (colder) summer temperatures based on old climate data. Unfortunately, it has been anything but normal.

Villages like Newtok are in a worse predicament than Quinhagak right now. Their whole village is slowly being swallowed up by the nearby river. One of the residents said that the land where the community is located is not only sinking, the surrounding land by the river is also eroding. The melting of the cryosphere is being felt by the whole community.

The Ninglick River is melting the permafrost which is similar to someone pulling a rug from under you, but in this case, the permafrost is being pulled away from the tundra resulting in huge chunks of land mass falling into the abyss. One of the arguments of staying or moving was; “It’s less expensive to build a new community then it is to stop the Ninglick River.”

This modules topic hit too close to home to be comfortable. I got shivers when I read about what the residents of Newtok are going through. I've heard about it in the news but never bothered to investigate it any further. It is very similar to what the people in Sishmaref are experiencing.

I haven't been home in a while, but I do know that the river pathway has changed. We've had to move the airport farther inland. When I was in high school, my grandpa used to say that in the future, the little creek that goes through the town will become the main river.
In the video Moving to Higher Ground, Stanley Tom remembered that the elders used to say that the village needs to be relocated, but nobody paid any attention to them because when you are younger, it's harder to visualize the future. The elders had probably experienced having to move before, and knew what was going to happen.

Module VIII- How are Arctic sea-ice, climate and culture all connected?

How are Arctic sea-ice, climate and culture all connected? First of all; cryosphere, thermohaline circulation, and cultures are all interrelated. What happens to one of them affects the other two.

Cryosphere, which refers to all frozen areas on the Earth’s surface reflects more radiation than it absorbs. It plays an important role in global temperature regulation. Thermohaline circulation, on the other hand is sometimes referred to as the ocean conveyer belt. I liked the term cardiovascular system better since its our Mother Earth we are talking about.

Unfortunately, its been suspected that the ocean currents are warming gradually due to reduction in size of our cryosphere and carbon dioxide emissions; possibly by microbes, and most definitely by humans and their lifestyle.

When I watched the film about Sishmaref, it reminded me of a show I watched last night on I Shouldn’t Be Alive. Two boys are in a boat without a motor. They decide to go fishing in the ocean but didn’t see a sign warning of strong ocean currents. They are pulled out to sea faster then they could paddle back to shore as their oars were no match for the undercurrent.

They both contemplated suicide at different times to quicken the inevitable but instead decided to wait and see if they would be rescued. They ended up being rescued just hours away from their body shutting down permanently.

The Shismaref residents are watching their livelihood literally breaking apart in front of their eyes. Global warming has melted the sea ice which acted as a protective barrier around the island. Without this barrier the residents are being “drifted” away from the sea-ice and away from the subsistance lifestyle that they are used to and depend on. The resident said he felt fear throughout his body. His statement stood out for me because he didn’t say that he was worried or that he was anxious. Robert Iyatunguk said it scares him in his body.

Contra Costa Community College is doing something to help reduce global warming. Chevron Energy Solutions is available to help save energy and cut greenhouses gas emissions by use of solar panels and they took up on the offer.
Tim Leong, stated that it was daunting and a bit scary to try something new, but they took the chance and had the largest solar power installation ever built at an institution of higher learning in North America.

A verse in the song, Circle of Life, states; “You should never take more than you give.” All of us can make a difference in making our planet Earth a better place to live by making changes in our lifestyle. It could be as simple as turning of a light switch or putting a solar panel on your roof. We can all make a difference.

Sites I liked:
Digital Bits Science Lab

Global warming information

Module VII - How is Earth's climate connected to its geological, biological and cultural systems?

Now that’s a loaded question. First of all, I learned how scientists detect existing planets in the universe. These are the ones who are looking for another “Earth” to replace the one we live in. They use a system called a dopler technique. They found that a star wobbles when its being pulled indicating that there’s an orbiting planet. The distance is then measured to see how far the planet is from the star which helps to determine if it’s inhabitable.

One of the reasons why scientists are looking for a new planet for us to reside in are microbes. Microbes are decomposing organic matter possibly producing carbon dioxide and methane. This decomposition could be producing greenhouse gases which trap heat near Earth’s surface contributing to global warming.

These microbes are found on the upper layer of permafrost according to Chien Lu Ping and Gary Michaelson. They were referred to as “permafrost people” by Josh Schimel. That almost endearing term got stuck in my mind. The “permafrost people” found that microbes live in moist areas. They remain active only until the water they are in is frozen solid. This film reminded me of another film where an Inupiaq hunter was holding a big chunk of ice. He held it up and looked at it from all sides and exclaimed; “This is good ice!” He knew that it was free of the black specks and ice worms since it was frozen solidly through.

These microbes seem like a pretty hardy organism. When I saw the chart of the Positive Feedback Loop it made me realize that they’re going to be here for a long time. The carbon dioxide they produce increases soil temperature, which increases the rate of microbial activity creating more nutrients, which increases shrub growth. The shrubs hold snow which acts like an insulating blanket increasing its insulation properties, which means more microbes!

I went to bed wondering what else could absorb all this excess carbon dioxide. I was aware of the world’s oceans having the capacity to hold some of it, also our forests and soil. Some scientists even came up with the carbon catcher synthetic leaf system, which I thought was way cool. I woke up at 2:30 a.m. wondering how we could get rid of the excess carbon dioxide without being disruptive to the ecosystem. How about ice worms?

As a child I used to see ice worms in late spring when the warmth of the sun melted the remnants of winter. I wondered how a worm could survive enclosed in ice with nothing to eat. Now that I’ve learned about microbes, I wondered if they fed on these organisms. I looked up ice worms and found that they feed on snow algae. I also came upon this amazing web-site about a scientist named Dr. Christner who found that these microbes may also be essential in order to our planet Earth to have snow and rain!

I am faintly optimistic about our planets future. I’m like Chase that was interviewed in the village of Council and probably tons more individuals worldwide who don’t want things to change because we believe that our world is perfect the way it is. But unfortunately if climate models are right, change is inevitable.

Scientists like La’ona DeWilde recognize that our lifestyle is at stake and are hoping that their scientific studies might help us to adapt to the developing changes. Our new motto may be; “If you can’t stop the change, adapt to the change.”

Drum roll please... here are my rewards:
Explore Alaska Blog- Amazing and colorful pictures
Catherine's Explore Alaska Blog- straight forward
Arctic Updates- Inupiaq Whale Hunt video was wonderful

Module VI - How are the Earth, atmosphere and cultures all connected?

Module VI -

How are the Earth, atmosphere and cultures all connected?

Us as humans are the ones that have the ability to change the way we live in order to preserve our earth. There is nowhere for the pollution we create to go but back to our atmosphere, oceans, or land. Some of the changes could be; use of reusable bags instead of plastic bags, use of wind power to generate electricity instead of fuel, or use of energy efficient cars instead of gas guzzlers. Depending on what we decide to do as individuals, our choice can be helpful or detrimental to our environment and our “home” earth. What we do, and how we live determines how we end up later in life.

The scary thing is, there are scientists that are looking for another planet in our galaxy that some inhabitants of earth can move to. If we don’t believe in our ability to make changes, we are in deep trouble. Instead of thinking of moving, why don’t we do an inspection to see what the problems are and then enforce the rules that the inhabitants need to follow or face some consequences?
What is causing the oceans to warm up? Why is there a gray haze in the Arctic sky when it used to be dark blue? We’ve experienced torrent rains, tsunamis, earthquakes, and tons of snow in places that usually don’t get snow. Maybe there are some things we need to drastically change and do without if it’s causing more negative than positive results. Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you. Why should it be different for our environment? All the smoke stacks from all the factories are sending out smoke to the atmosphere. Of course there is going to be consequences. The smoke has gases that are not compatible to the gases in the atmosphere, I’m sure that there’s conversions happening when the two mix together. I wouldn’t be surprised if the chemicals are mixed in during the condensation process and come back down mixed in with the rain.

Some of the disasters are caused by nature so we are not to blame for everything. I was looking at the commercial with Apolo Ohno. He’s in a skating rink gaining speed, as he gains speed the ice detaches from the side of the rink and starts rotating. It was stated in the news that the earthquake in Chile might have sped the earth’s spin and shifted its axis by about 3 inches. This shortened our days by 1.26 millionths of a second.

This class has opened up my mind and also gave me a new perspective on how I see nature. I’m now aware of the plate tectonics under me and am aware that they do shift suddenly without warning. Even though the P waves do warn us first, I’m not sure as to how long after that the S waves would start.
I’m also aware that the clouds do have the ability to deflect light and so does snow. I guess I’m finally letting it all out, all the information that I’ve kept retained and mulled over, but not ready to talk about yet.

Module V

Module V Part I - How are climate, cultures, and oceans all connected?

Everything on earth has limitations but some species or microbes can also adapt. Fish in the ocean survive only in certain temperatures, so do plant life and humans. When one part is affected, the whole cycle gets affected.
An ancient parasitic micron has survived by adapting to changes in environment. The water temperature of the Yukon River has warmed over the last 30 years, causing the Ichthyophous; a white spot desease or Ich to infect Alaskan salmon.
According to marine biologist Kevin D. Lafferty who studies parasites for the U.S. Geological survey; “Climate change isn’t going to increase infectious diseases but change the disease landscape.”
The density differences in the ocean are most likely being affected by the warming of the ocean. Microbes that used to be at the bottom of the ocean are moving up due to the changes in temperature. I agree with Lafferty’s opinion; “Some of these surprises are not going to be pretty.”

For fifth graders, I’m going to teach the concept of air versus water heat capacity using the video on You Tube. Using visualization should help to cement that knowledge into their minds. I tried the experiment at home first before I showed it to my students.

Part II- Reason For the Season

Earth’s seasons are caused by the Earth’s tilt on it’s axis of 23.45. The tilt of Earth’s axis causes the hemispheres to receive different amount of the Sun’s energy as it revolves around the Earth. The tilt creates unequal heating on both hemispheres and therefore opposite seasons.
The Sun shines indirectly on the northern hemisphere at a glancing angle sending out less thermal energy. Even though the Sun is sending out less thermal energy to the Northern Hemisphere, the white polar regions are receding. This recession causes less mass for the Sun to reflect off of to reflect the energy back into the atmosphere. And as the science activity showed with the use of the balloon; the atmosphere has less capacity to retain heat than water.