After watching a short online video that recaps the enormous scale of accumulating plastic waste in our oceans, student teams are challenged to devise a method to remove the most plastic microbeads from a provided commercial personal care product—such as a facial cleanser or body wash. They brainstorm filtering methods ideas and design their own specific procedures that use teacher-provided supplies (coffee filters, funnels, plastic syringes, vinyl tubing, water, plastic bags) to extract the microplastics as efficiently as possible. The research and development student teams compare the final masses of their extracted microbeads to see which filter solutions worked best. Students suggest possible future improvements to their filter designs. A student worksheet is provided.

How do microwaves heat up your coffee? Adjust the frequency and amplitude of microwaves. Watch water molecules rotating and bouncing around. View the microwave field as a wave, a single line of vectors, or the entire field.

How do microwaves heat up your coffee? Adjust the frequency and amplitude of microwaves. Watch water molecules rotating and bouncing around. View the microwave field as a wave, a single line of vectors, or the entire field.

This task, from ClimeTime educators, is targeted to students in grades 6–8 studying body systems or algal blooms. Students develop a model showing the interactions that allow humans to detect issues in water quality based on the taste of the water.
Resource includes a student task document, teacher guide, and task facilitation slides.

This task, by ClimeTime educators, is targeted to students in grades 6–8 studying ecology and human impacts on the environment. Students identify relationships between human activity and environmental impacts on water resources. Educators can leverage students’ ideas to assess understandings of criteria in evaluating solutions.
Resources include a student task document, teacher guide, and task facilitation slides.

This stream field investigation will allow students to look at stream erosional patterns, take measurements to determine discharge, and conduct a chemical and turbidity analysis of Garvin Brook in Stockton, MN. Based on this investigation students will create a presentation that includes a new testable question that may be carried out the following year along with a stream ecology study.

Rating: Example of High Quality NGSS Design

Awarded the NGSS Design Badge

Science Discipline: Life Science, Earth and Space Science, Physical Science

Length: Unit

Numerous reports suggest an increase in white shark encounters in the United States in recent years and the public is worried. In this integrated middle school unit, students engage in three-dimensional learning that enables them to explain the phenomenon. White sharks in the coastal waters of Southern California serve as a case study for students to ask questions and build understanding. Students initially question if white shark encounters are in fact increasing and investigate reports of sightings. They wonder if we know whether or not the population is on the rise, leading students to next explore past evidence from fossils and data from historic fishers logs. Students then question how scientists today are monitoring white sharks, setting the stage to explore the use of modern tracking devices (digging deep into waves and signals) and what researchers know about white sharks because of the application of this technology. This opens up the opportunity for students to question and consider what the science community has learned about white shark life history, how humans have impacted the white shark population off Southern California, and to devise a way to address public concerns.

Middle School Water Quality Curriculum SynopsisDesign your own wetland science field trip or have WREN staff visit your classroom.Programs address Oregon State Science Standards and Common Core State Learning Standards. Purpose of the Water Quality Curriculum: •    For students to model the scientific method, engineering, math, and social studies practices. •    To explore and solve problems along the Long Tom River Watershed. •    To use tools and technology to collect data and use that data to answer questions.•    To engineer solutions to real-life problems and learn how to resolve water quality disputes in real-life scenarios.  Each lesson can be integrated into our 2-hour tour of the West Eugene Wetlands (WEW). How much time is required for the lesson, the best season, and where the lesson is best experienced is indicated next to the lesson tile._______________________________________________________________________________________________What is a Watershed? Activity/ 50 minutes (Class or WEW):It’s recommended that all classes begin their wetland field study with this fun and interactive, whole-body activity that investigates how vegetation affects the movement of water over land surfaces and identifies best management practices to reduce erosion. Science Standards: MS-ESS2; MS-ESS2-4.    Earth’s Systems: Develop a model to describe cycling of water through earth’s systems driven by energy from the sun and force of gravity._______________________________________________________________________________________________Wetland Soil Study/ 90 minutes (WEW- Fall or Spring):Students will learn the history behind the unique composition of soil in the southern Willamette Valley, discover how wetland soils have an important role in filtering and cleaning the water that runs through them, explore and record the physical characteristics of wetland soil using a Munsell Chart, measure the hydric capacity of different types of soil, and make the connection between soils and water in a wet prairie. Science Standards: MS-ESS2-2.    Earth’s Systems: Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth's surface at varying time and spatial scales.Common Core Standards:Mathematics7.EE.B.4.     Use variables to represent quantities in a real-world of mathematical problem, and construct simple equations and inequalities to solve problems by reasoning about quantities.______________________________________________________________________________________________           Water Quality of Amazon Creek/ 90 minutes (WEW- Fall and Spring):Through experimentation and a simulation, students will learn how increases in water acidity have endangered the quality of life for water-based organisms in parts of Eugene. Students will model water molecules under different circumstances, test water samples from Amazon creek for dissolved oxygen, PH, and temperature and learn how these variables impact the quality of life in our waterways.  Science Standards: MS-PS1-1.          Matter and Its Interactions: Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules  and extended structures.Common Core Standards:Mathematics 6.SP.B.4.            Display numerical data in plots on a number line, including dot plots, histograms, and box plots.7.EE.3.               Solve multiple real-life & mathematical problems posed with positive and negative rational numbers in any form using tools strategically. Apply properties of operations to calculate with numbers in any form. _______________________________________________________________________________________________Flood-Plan Engineering Design/ 90 minutes (WEW or Class- Fall, Winter, Spring):Students will learn about historic floods in the Willamette Valley, and explore flood dynamics by building models of riverbeds and testing their holding capacity. Students will use engineering to design systems that will help prevent flood damage and learn about how human modifications to a river or wetland can alter the floodplain.Science Standards:MS-ESS3-3.     Earth’s & Human Activity: Apply Scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.MS-ESS3-2.    Earth’s & Human Activity: Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their efforts.MS-ETS1-1; 1-4. Engineering Design: Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a  proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.  Common Core Standards:MathematicsMP.2.        Reason abstractly and quantitatively._______________________________________________________________________________________________Water Quality Debate/ 60 minutes (Class- Fall, Winter, Spring):Students will demonstrate how disputes regarding water quality and quantity can be settled through mediation by playing character roles in a mock Town Hall Meeting. They will develop and engage in an evidence supporting argument surrounding a local water-related issue, evaluate arguments presented by others of different viewpoints, and decide on a resolution.Science Standards:MS-LS2-5.    Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy and Dynamics: Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem servicesCommon Core Standards:ELA/LiteracyMS-LS-2-2.    Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one on one, in groups, and teacher led) with diverse partners on grade 8 topics, texts, and issues, building on other’s ideas and expressing their own clearly. MS-LS2-2.    Present claims or findings, emphasizing salient points in a focused coherent manner with relevant evidence, sound valid reasoning and adequate well-chosen details, use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and other pronunciation. 

Students explore how different materials (sand, gravel, lava rock) with different water contents on different slopes result in landslides of different severity. They measure the severity by how far the landslide debris extends into model houses placed in the flood plain. This activity is a small-scale model of a debris chute currently being used by engineers and scientists to study landslide characteristics. Much of this activity setup is the same as for the Survive That Tsunami activity in Lesson 5 of the Natural Disasters unit.

This unit is to be taught as an extension to the FOSS WATER INVESTIGATION 1, Part 3, WATER ON A SLOPE. After learning that water flows down a slope, students will understand that this concept determines how our watersheds flow. It will also explain why some rivers (such as the Red River) appear to be flowing "up" on a map. They will then create a landform map of Minnesota accurately representing the higher elevations (our RIDGELINES) and the location of our major rivers and bodies of water. This unit can also be extended by many of the activities in the Project Wild and the MinnAqua Lesson Books.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Viruses might be small, but they drive ecological change across the planet. That includes helping lock otherwise harmful carbon away in soil. Unfortunately, little is known about soil viruses worldwide. A recent study extensively examined the viral microbiome of a Minnesotan peatland from the experimental site SPRUCE. Peatlands are the largest natural terrestrial reservoirs of carbon on earth and, as such, are a critical component of the carbon cycle. The makeup of viral communities in the SPRUCE peat varied with sample depth, water content, and carbon chemistry factors. Of the 4,326 distinct virus types identified from SPRUCE, only 164 had been previously detected in other soils and those matches were almost exclusively from other peatlands. Peatlands are a very wet, but otherwise terrestrial, ecosystem. However, none of the previously detected aquatic viruses matched SPRUCE viruses, which suggests a terrestrial and aquatic ‘species’ divide..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Metagenomic techniques can be used to create microbial gene “catalogs” for different environments. First, shotgun sequencing reads are assembled, and genes are then predicted from the assembled reads. Typically, the reads are assembled either for individual samples separately or for all samples together (co-assembly). However, neither method is ideal, so a new study investigated if a third combined method, mix-assembly, could be a better choice. For mix-assembly, the genes from the individual assemblies were clustered according to their encoded proteins. The resulting nonredundant genes were then clustered with the genes from the co-assembly according to their encoded proteins to yield the final gene set. Compared with the other methods, mix-assembly produced a larger nonredundant gene set for metagenomic samples from the Baltic Sea. Mix-assembly also yielded more genes that were complete and more genes whose functions could be annotated..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

The problem deals with a rational expression which is built up from operations arising naturally in a context: adding the volumes of the fertilizer and the water, and dividing the volume of the fertilizer by the resulting sum. Thus it encourages students to see the expression as having meaning in terms of numbers and operations, rather than as an abstract arrangement of symbols.

In this exercise, students use their intuition to enumerate similarities and differences between groundwater flow and oil migration. The activity is divided into two parts: (1) brainstorming of ideas, and (2) an expanded discussion of selected topics. The instructor begins by briefly reviewing the Rules of Brainstorming and then soliciting answers to a question such as: "How is the flow of groundwater in an aquifer similar to or different from the movement of oil in a petroleum reservoir?" The instructor records the similarities and differences suggested by students in two lists. After a sufficient quantity of responses has been gathered, the instructor chooses certain ideas for closer examination and discussion. (The instructor may decide on target topics in advance, or may choose to 'go with the flow' to explore interesting ideas that emerge from the students.) The activity gives students the opportunity to connect the disciplines of hydrogeology and petroleum geology, with particular emphasis on the concepts of multiphase flow, relative permeability, and saturation distributions at the water table and oil-water contacts.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Students use provided materials to design and build prototype artificial heart valves. Their functioning is demonstrated using water to simulate the flow of blood through the heart. Upon completion, teams demonstrate their fully functional prototypes to the rest of the class, along with a pamphlet that describes the device and how it works.

This lesson from Common Threads Farm is geared towards upper elementary ages but can be modified for lower elementary easily. In this lesson students will observe ways that erosion is being prevented on their school grounds and observe the difference in how water reacts to permeable and impermeable surfaces. Students will use this knowledge to make models of communities and must consider erosion prevention strategies as each community will experience a model heavy precipitation event. By observing how their models react to the water and by discussing limitations to their models students will gain a deeper understanding of erosion and modeling.

We created a hands-on activity for middle and high school students that describes glacier mass balance in a changing climate. The students make a glacier using glue, water and detergent ("flubber") and construct a glacier valley using plastic sheeting. They are encouraged to run several tests with different values for valley slope, "flubber" temperature, and basal conditions. The students then calculate the "flubber" velocity for each scenario. We compare our glacier models to the dynamics of real glaciers and discuss how and why they might be changing over time.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Watershed Awareness using Technology and Environmental Research for Sustainability (WATERS)

The WATERS project is developing and researching a student-centered, place-based, and accessible curriculum for teaching watershed concepts and water career awareness for students in the middle grades. This 10-lesson unit includes online, classroom, and field activities. Students use a professional-grade online GIS modeling resource, simulations, sensors, and other interactive resources to collect environmental data and analyze their local watershed issues. The WATERS project is paving a path to increased access to research-based, open access curricula that hold the potential to significantly increase awareness of and engagement with watershed concepts and career pathways in learners nationwide.

This material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. The software is licensed under Simplified BSD, MIT or Apache 2.0 licenses. Please provide attribution to the Concord Consortium and the URL https://concord.org.

This activity starts by introducing students to the ways industries in the United States use water and asking students to predict how much water is used to produce a variety of common goods. After presenting the true water footprints of the common goods, the activity introduces and explains a simplified production and supply system for an apple. Together, the class first practices brainstorming all the ways water is used to produce an apple through a structured systems brainstorming approach. In small groups, students then apply that structured systems brainstorming to assess how water is used to supply an apple to a school cafeteria. Lastly, students reflect on why less water is needed to produce certain common goods as compared to others.

In this activity students build a hydrologic model of Mono Lake in MATLAB and then use the model to evaluate the California State Water Board's 1994 decision regulating diversions from the watershed and design their own water management plan for the lake.
In 1941 the natural water balance of Mono Lake was altered when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began diverting water from the watershed. The lake level dropped 45 feet by 1982 threatening the local environment. After a long legal battle the California State Water Board issued an order (D. 1631) limiting water diversions by LADWP in order to return the lake to a desirable level. As of June 2019 the lake surface has yet to reach the target elevation.
In developing a water-balance model of Mono Lake students learn to idealize a hydrologic system as stocks and flows, translate their stock and flow diagram into a water balance equation and solve this equation over time using the forward Euler method. Once students have a working lake model they use MATLAB built-in functions to explore the variance and co-variance of hydrologic data and use these to constrain a probabilistic model of the Lake.