Education Standards
2. Chp. 8 Teacher Guide (doc)
3. State We're In: Washington - Chapter 8
4. Student Handout - Launch
5. Student Handout - Focused Notes
6. Student Handout - Text Dependent Questions
7. Student Handout - Focused Inquiry
The State We're In: Washington - Teacher Guide Ch. 8: Civics and Nature
Overview
This is a Teacher's Guide for The State We're In Washington: Your guide to state, tribal and local government. These quides are developed by members of the Washington State Social Studies Cadre.
Chapter 8 focuses on the natural resources in the state of Washington including challenges the government faces when competing interests are at stake, as well as ways the state and individuals can have an impact on that future.
Civics and the Natural World: Land, Air, Water, Plants, and Animals
General Overview
This chapter focuses on the natural resources in the state of Washington including challenges the government faces when competing interests are at stake, as well as ways the state and individuals can have an impact on that future.
Enduring Understanding
While the state of Washington faces challenges with respect to the depletion of natural resources, both government agencies and individuals can create compromises that will have a positive impact on the physical environment well into the future.
Standards
- G2.6-8.3 Explain and analyze how the environment has affected people and how human actions modify the physical environment, and in turn, how the physical environment limits or promotes human activities in Washington State in the past and/or present.
- C2.6-8.2 - Distinguish the structure, organization, powers, and limits of the government at the local, state, and tribal levels.
- SSS4: Creates a product that uses social studies content to support a thesis, and presents the product in an appropriate manner to a meaningful audience.
Learning Goals
- Explain ways that the physical environment is impacted by human actions.
- Research and explain the roles government agencies have in balancing resource management and public access to natural resources in Washington State.
- Write a public service announcement script for a video or radio show, using relevant evidence and valid reasoning to encourage citizens to protect the physical environment.
Supporting Questions
Students consider these questions - finding and using evidence to support the Enduring Understanding.
- What challenges do the natural resources in the state of Washington face?
- How have the government agencies tried to address the challenges?
- How can individuals in Washington impact the future of the state?
Tasks
- Launch
- Focused Notes
- Text-Dependent Questions
- Focused Inquiry
Attribution and License
Attribution
This Teacher’s Guide for Chapter 8: The State We’re In Washington was developed by Amy Ripley and Nicole Snyder, Pullman School District.
The downloadable digital version of The State We're In: Washington. Your guide to state, tribal and local government by the League of Women Voters of Washington Education Fund is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. Print copies of The State We’re In: Washington, may be purchased from the League of Women Voters of Washington website.
Leavenworth, WA area cover image by Don White from Pixabay
License
Except where otherwise noted, this Teacher Guide for The State We’re In Washington Chapter 8, copyright Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, is available under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All logos and trademarks are property of their respective owners. Sections used under fair use doctrine (17 U.S.C. § 107) are marked
This resource may contain links to websites operated by third parties. These links are provided for your convenience only and do not constitute or imply any endorsement or monitoring by OSPI. Please confirm the license status of any third-party resources and understand their terms of use before reusing them.
Launch
Task 1: Launch
Purpose: Engage students into the content of the chapter.
Distribute the Student handout: Launch to students.
- Watch the video to promote the idea that salmon are a precious natural resource. Provide an opportunity for the students to address ways to protect salmon.
- Guide students in answering the prompts on the handout individually and in partners.
- There is no “correct” answer. Encourage the students to explain their thinking with each other.
Focused Notes
Task 2: Focused Notes
Purpose: Activating thinking about the content of the chapter
Distribute the Student handout: Focused Notes to students.
- As students read, they will record their understanding, thinking, and questions about the content using the handout.
- After students have completed the work, have them discuss the area of the natural world they are most interested in preserving. This will create the avenue for a personal interest inquiry.
Text-Dependent Questions
Task 3: Text Dependent Questions
Purpose: Engage students in a close reading activity about specific chapter content. The students will need to return to the content multiple times to truly understand the depth of the issues.
Distribute the Student handout: Text Dependent Questions document to students.
Before handing out the Text Dependent Questions, conduct a whole-group discussion about “competing interests”. Remind them that any time humans interact with the environment or try to make improvements, the result could positively or negatively affect the physical environment.
During the discussion, have the students return to their Focused Notes and identify evidence from Chapter 8 that explains how human interests or actions adversely affected the physical environments. Ask the students to discuss examples from the text with an elbow partner.
For example, a student might contribute the following example, “On page 114, the federal government gave a lot of land to settlers... and the rail lines.” Although it doesn’t explicitly state that encouraging humans to occupy land or railroads to build more lines would impact the natural resources, these actions improve the lives of humans, but could change or deplete the vegetation or food sources in the area, so the wildlife might have to search elsewhere.
Distribute the Student Handout for the Text-Dependent Questions.
- As students perform the first read of “Sally the Steelhead Salmon” on pages 126-129. They will search for human interests that impacted Sally’s journey.
- After students complete the first read, use the fishbowl discussion technique from Teaching Tolerance to gather ideas about competing interests and human actions that adversely affected Sally’s journey.
- Have students perform the second read of “Sally the Steelhead Salmon.” They will record the names of government agencies, tribes, and citizen organizations that “worked to restore and protect” the habitats that Sally frequented. Have them add the name and the measure taken to protect Sally’s habitat to their notes.
Focused Inquiry
Task 4: Focused Inquiry
Purpose: Students will engage in a focused inquiry that matches a government agency, tribes, or citizen group to protective measures for supporting the physical environment. The focused research will be a springboard for answering the compelling question and taking informed action.
Compelling Question
How can humans effectively balance their interactions with and protect the physical environment?u