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LESSON ONE
- Preparation for a visit to a salt marsh
Lessons within this 3-part Lesson Plan include:
- Lesson Question
- Learning Standards Addressed
- Performance Objective Addressed
- Resources Listed
- Learning tasks
- Assessment tasks
- Rubrics for assessment
Overall Unit Question: Why is a salt marsh important?
Goal: For each group to prepare to gather information for multimedia
reports.
Lesson 1 Question:
What will we discover at the salt marsh?
A. Activity before the trip
Have students consider the following questions and issues:
- Why are we going to a salt marsh? Definition of a habitat.
Water, land, air.
- What will we do there? Define gathering information.
- What are we looking for? Information about plants, animals,
temperature of water, temperature of soil, temperature of air,
and sounds.
- How are we to act? Whose habitat is it?
- How do people act when they visit where someone else lives?
Define ecology, fragility, sea-level, small-microscopic, micro-culture,
wetlands, endangered, fish, crustacean.
- What we will bring there? Introduce the ways we'll gather
information and what we'll be looking for.
B. Introduce the students to the materials needed:
- Pencils and sketch and note pads
- Portable computer
- Camera (digital)
- Thermometers
- Tape recorders
- Measuring tools
- Binoculars
- Jars and plastic boxes and labeling material
C. Divide class into small, specialist groups for training
in using the tools and materials to gather information. Using books,
field guides, maps, examples and specimens, groups train in:
- What to look for
- How to record it
- How to gather it
- What to write
- What to sketch
D.
As individual students check out the various
instruments, they record their findings on the following
chart.
E. Teachers compose groups and assign different roles,
taking account of student preferences and practical matters:
- Group A: Collect information about water.
- Group B: Collect enough information so you can draw a large-scale map or create a topographical display.
- Group C: Collect plant information and specimens and identify endangered specimens (do not collect!).
- Group D: Collect animal information, where appropriate.
- Group E: Collect information about birds, use guides.
F. Invite a park ranger or local naturalist to the class
to give a talk on how to enter an environment without spoiling
it.
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