The health of the watershed has a direct impact on the health of those that use it. This unit introduces students to the concept that imbalances and contaminants in the watershed can cause disease and infection in humans. The first part of this unit begins with an introduction to the major concept of a watershed and how humans can have a direct impact on the chemicals and organic matter that are carried within. Students study how chemical contaminants including mercury, nitrogen, arsenic, and lead are introduced into the watershed and the clinical presentation of these contaminants in humans. Each contaminant includes real-world case studies—including the arsenic ground-water contamination in Bangladesh and the lead pipe incident in Washington DC.

Students will also learn about microbial pathogens including coliform bacterial species, Naegleria fowleri , and Cryptosporidium . All pathogens include examples of how they are introduced into the watershed, how they infect humans, and how to remediate these pathogens. Sample case study formats for the presentation of this material are included in the activities section, along with labs that students can perform.

This unit exposes students to basic concepts of hydrology, like the hydrological cycle, water budget of a river and chemistry of carbon in freshwaters. Students will explore and study the components of the hydrological cycle, the factors that influence this cycle, investigate the water budget equation and compare and contrast two watersheds that have similar overall amount of precipitation, but differ in terms of temperature and climate.

Students will also learn about pollutants in fresh waters, pH and pOH of water and its influence on the ecosystem, chemistry of carbon and heavy metals and how does a sewage treatment plant work. As a part of their curriculum, a field trip to a local sewage treatment plant is highly recommended for students and teachers.

Each lesson will be accompanied by a lesson plan. Depending on lesson, also included will be examples and applications (problems to be solved by students using concepts presented in the lesson).

The unit is intended to be taught in 10th or 11th grade Physical and Environmental Science classes, but it can be used also by middle school 7th and 8th grade Science teachers to expose students to concepts related to physical, chemical properties of water, states of matter, physical and chemical change, water cycle and basic geology.

The unit will last approximately three weeks.

This unit focuses on the movement of water through a plant and how it is driven by transpiration at the leaf. The unit is applicable to both a physical science classroom as it focuses on the properties of water as well as other physical science topics such as pressure, fluid flow, and surface area to volume relationships. The unit is also applicable to a biology curriculum as it covers the phenomenon of water movement through a plant. Many structures and adaptations are discussed that allow plants to achieve this process. The unit dives deep into the properties of water and how unique plant structures take advantage of said properties to move water from the ground to heights over 300 feet. There are classroom activities included as well as demonstrations mentioned throughout the text.

The phenomenon, or hook, for this unit is the movement of water against the pull of gravity, in particular to the top of our giant trees such as the Sequioa semperivens (giant redwood) which reach heights of over 300 feet. Teaching around a phenomenon is the current trend with the States adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The use of water transport in plants is an effective phenomenon because not only is easy for students to grasp the oddity of water moving against gravity but also because the understanding of this action requires students to grasp scientific concepts from multiple disciplines.

In this unit, students will learn about multiple ecosystems and the human impact to these systems as they follow migratory fish through their life cycles. As students study migratory fish, they will learn about the ecosystems of the rivers, Long Island Sound estuary, and the Atlantic Ocean. In this way, students will develop an understanding of the complex interactions between these ecosystems as well as their interdependent relationships in our global water system enabling the survival of these world travelers. This engaging thematic curriculum unit is designed for students of 3rd through 6th grades to explore the more complex ecosystems of the Long Island Sound watershed. This unit builds upon a prior unit I wrote called, “Just Ask! Exploring Marine Life of Long Island Sound.” /curriculum/units/2013/4/13.04.02.x.html

Through this study, students will learn the fundamental principles and interactions between multiple ecosystems and the marine creatures that swim within them. As students develop an appreciation and deeper understanding of these marine creatures and each ecosystem, students will more fully understand the significance of the human impact of these systems and be inspired to invest in potential solutions. This problem based unit will build core knowledge of watershed science, our global water system, and the migratory fish that move through these marine environments as students ask questions, read, write and investigate these topics.

This six-week curriculum unit is designed for students in the second grade as they follow a water molecule through a watershed. The unit begins with Follow the Water from Brook to Ocean , a picture book by Arthur Dorros that introduces to primary-level students how water moves and how it has shaped our earth over time. The young scientists will use their skills of inquiry to understand the structure of a watershed, investigate human impact, and participate in activities and experiments throughout. Students will use journals to document their learning as they build vocabulary, identify stream order, discover how materials dissolve or not in our waters, create an aquifer, and design a game that simulates the pollution entering our watershed.

This unit will allow students to investigate the 1999 die-off of lobsters in the Long Island Sound. Students will understand the changes in the Long Island ecosystems over the years. They will also gain a deeper understanding of how systems are connected, particularly land and sea ecosystems, and the types of environmental influences that can influence the lobster population. This will allow students to gain a deeper understanding about the environment around them, develop scientific inquiry skills, and enhance their problem-solving skills.

This curriculum unit will allow students will learn about the role a variety of factors play in a watershed by examining the lobster die-off in the Long Island Sound. Students will become experts on the six major factors that scientists believe may have contributed to the lobster die-off including: bacterial infections that cause the breakdown of the exoskeleton, a parasite that attacks the nervous system, higher than normal water temperatures, environmental effects of pesticide and insecticide use, pollution, and changes in dissolved oxygen levels.

After learning about the various potential causes of the lobster die-off students will develop their own explanation citing evidence in order to defend what they believe caused this die-off.

This is a unit on local watersheds in the New Haven, CT area. It is designed for high school students to ask questions about their local watersheds, research information, collect data and observations, and use that new knowledge in a community service project to benefit their watershed or community.

This unit is a multidisciplinary unit created for a high school math classroom, designed to combine statistics and hydrology. In this unit, students will learn about the water cycle and water budgets within the watershed. The unit starts with learning about basic budgeting in a watershed, comparable to financial budgeting, and expands to creating linear regressions based on the relationship between precipitation, discharge, and evapotranspiration in a watershed system. Students will be able to synthesize the information they learn about the watershed to learn about topics such as graphing points, lines, creating scatterplots, and creating linear regressions for the line of best fit. By teaching statistics through the lens of the watershed, the primary objective is to facilitate active, engaged learners who understand how math can be usefully applied to various contexts in the world around us while gaining a deeper appreciation for the water resources on Earth.

This was designed for a Geometry classroom, but could be modified for Pre-Algebra- Statistics based on student needs and interest level.

This unit is designed to help second grade level students develop an understanding of the effects of weathering and erosion caused by water, specifically the creation of identifiable landforms. Students will explore and test the creation of a variety of landforms using both a community stream table and personal stream tables. Students will be able to conduct a series of investigations related to water erosion. This unit focuses on these specific landforms: braided channel, canyon, cliff, delta, meandering stream, oxbow lake, and valley. Students will also use Google Earth to explore the location of these types of landforms both locally and globally.

Watersheds are areas of land that drain rain, water, or snow into one location such as a stream, lake or wetland. It is a subject that has a number of interconnected parts that rely and function together to maintain the health of the watershed. In order to understand how watersheds behave and the impact they can have on the environment and how our actions affect them, one needs to understand the budgets of water, carbon, phosphorous, and nitrogen within watersheds. We will first breakdown the idea of the watershed into the cycles that make it up. From there, we will look at the environmental impact that each cycle has and how human involvement can affect the life forms that live within the cycles. Watersheds have the important roles of supplying water and food to the surrounding population. Learning more about how they function and becoming knowledgeable about the ways we can preserve and protect watersheds is a good way the preserve and keep up a high quality of life.