More Than Just a Lake!
By creating a map of the rivers flowing into your Great Lake, learn how rivers form a watershed.
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Your Great Lake!
How much water does each Great Lake hold? Use this lesson as a demonstration or a classroom lesson to create visual representations of the Great Lakes, Lake Baikal, and the relationships between surface area, retention time and pollution effects.
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Going with The Flow
Students use a simple model to discover that air moving over water causes the surface of the water
to move horizontally. In writing and in a discussion, students relate this concept to surface currents in
the ocean and the Great Lakes.
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The Incredible Shrinking Cup Lab
Learn how students can develop hypotheses to test the effects of depth and pressure on the volume of Styrofoam cups by deploying the cups off the US EPA’s R/V Lake Guardian in Lake Superior. A great lesson showing the integration of Boyle’s Law and ocean physics.
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Ojibway—Early Immigrants to the Great Lakes Region
Most history books say Europeans “discovered” North America as if it had no history before then. As a result, students know little about the American Indians who settled here long before the Europeans came. This activity introduces students to one tribe of early Great Lakes settlers, the Ojibway (Chippewa), who began to migrate from what would later become New Brunswick and Maine in 900 A.D. This activity will be most effective if paired with Activity 14 or a classroom unit on European immigration to the Midwest.
External Curriculum Materials
Where Do All the Toxins Go? (Internal View)
When students have completed this activity, they will be able to demonstrate how chemicals accumulate in fish fat, the biopathways of the toxins in the fish’s body, and ways to prepare fish to avoid consuming the toxins.
External Curriculum Materials
Beach Mysteries
Students learn about bacteria as an indicator of beach water quality for swimming. In groups they solve hypothetical problems associated with beaches. Then students write persuasive essays on the issue.
Activities:
- Discuss the effect of harmful bacteria on swimming conditions at beaches.
- Diagram three reasons for beach contamination.
- Explain solutions for beach health problems.
- Write a persuasive essay about beach health
External Curriculum Materials
Hydropoly – A Decision Making Game
Students play a board game to hone their decision-making skills. Through the various choices posed in the game, they are asked to consider both economic and environmental well being in making decisions.
Objectives:
- Discuss land-use practices that affect Great Lakes wetlands
- Make decisions and recognize personal priorities with regard to wetlands
- Describe some of the economic factors that often drive land use
External Curriculum Materials
Indoor Dunes
Students study Creature Cards at sand dune ecosystem stations and determine what adaptations help the organisms to live in their environments.
Objectives:
- List organisms that live in the dunes.
- Describe the specialized adaptations of sand dune organisms.
- Explain the different habitats in sand dunes.
External Curriculum Materials
Invader Species of the Great Lakes
Learners will work in small groups to organize scrambled exotic species cards. Each group will present a different exotic species in a poster or fact sheet to the class, and then the group will act out (charades) a way to avoid the spread of their exotic species.
Objectives:
- name and visually recognize some invader (nonindigenous/ exotic) species of the Great Lakes
- understand and analyze the positive and negative impacts of invader species on the Great Lakes ecosystem
- explain the ways in which invader species are introduced into the Great Lakes
- describe and act out ways to avoid the spread of exotic species