Activities
A Picture of Health: Ecosystem Health Continuum
The Ecosystem Health Continuum gets students playing and experimenting with their own understanding of and assessment criteria for determining ecosystem health. Students look at a series of photographs of ecosystems that show a range of health. They arrange them along a continuum from healthy to unhealthy, and practice backing up the claims they make using evidence. Once they make a persona... More »
A Picture of health: Human Health Continuum
Use A Picture of Health to prime students to think about what it means to be healthy. Before they tackle ecosystem health, students consider human health – a topic more familiar that they all have personal experience with. Students look at a set of photographs of people that show a range of health. They work together to arrange them along a continuum from healthy to unhealthy. They practice back... More »
Be a Watershed
To introduce watershed concepts, students will become a watershed and experience firsthand its interconnectedness, and how water flows from lake to stream to river to ocean. Students will work together to create/become different watershed features. This activity will give students basic watershed knowledge before moving forward to discuss how watersheds are influenced by outside sources and system... More »
Biodiversity Jenga
Pair up Bill Nye the Science Guy and Jenga to kick off the Biodiversity Watershed Experience. This activity engages students with the concept of biodiversity, and underscores the importance of maintaining healthy, diverse ecosystems. Students remove native species from an ecosystem, and add non-native or invasive species. They see and understand how these actions may ultimately compromise the heal... More »
Conduct Oral History Interviews
Students conduct formal, tape-recorded or videotaped oral history interviews of community members. Exposure to the diversity of interviewees’ experiences, values, and perspectives provides students with a deeper understanding of past and current community values for watershed resources. This activity was developed as part of the Penobscot River Watershed Education Program, a collaborative pro... More »
Connect the Species
Connect the Species lets students summarize all of the work they did during their All My Watershed Neighbors Watershed Experience. This activity extends the Scientific Conference Species Swap where students learned about the species that their classmates researched. In Connect the Species, students describe connections among the species in their watershed habitats (including humans) and create ... More »
Cultural and Historical Research
Students visit local museums and historical societies, where they conduct cultural and historical research to broaden and deepen their knowledge of past and present community connections to watershed resources. Students use social science research skills to record their observations and ask questions of local historians. This activity was developed as part of the Penobscot River Watershed Educa... More »
Diversity Statements
Students work together to come up with their own working definition of diversity and biodiversity that everyone understands and can use effectively. This definition will lay the conceptual groundwork for students’ investigation of biodiversity in a local ecosystem through the Biodiversity Watershed Experience.... More »
Finding Balance
To help students understand that there are different categories of natural resources, they will model different types of resources to discover the difference between renewable and non-renewable resources. They will apply this knowledge by labeling resources identified in Maine: A Natural Resource Rich State as either renewable or non-renewable. This activity can be done inside or outside and modif... More »
Get to Know Your Community
Students define the idea of community in small groups and as a class, come up with a working definition for the word, and spend twenty minutes reflecting on what it means to be from the community that they call home. This activity was developed as part of the Penobscot River Watershed Education Program, a collaborative project led by Maine Sea Grant, the University of Maine Senator George J. M... More »
Get to Know Your Watershed
Students define the term watershed, and identify their local watershed using Google Earth and US Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps. Students then identify water bodies and other geographic features, human communities, and habitat types within the boundaries of their watershed. This activity was developed as part of the Penobscot River Watershed Education Program, a collaborative projec... More »
Google Earth Diversity Trip
Students take a Google Earth Diversity Trip to engage with the idea of biodiversity in their local watershed. Google Earth is a free online resource that lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery and maps. Using this tool, students become more familiar with the boundaries, features, and orientation of their own watershed within the larger Gulf of Maine watershed. This activity b... More »
Headline: Resources and Us
Often times, the health and availability of one natural resource relies on the health and availability of another. Natural resources interact with, depend upon, and influence each other. Students will read articles featured in Maine’s local newspapers that highlight natural resources and their interactions with people, the environment, and the issues they face. Students will be given the opportu... More »
Here Banana! Build skills to find (and not find) what you are looking for
Students conduct this simple investigation with familiar materials to get in the groove of looking carefully for something, making a claim that they found it or did not find it, and supporting that claim with solid, bullet proof evidence. Students plan and carry out a short, sweet investigation to determine whether or not a “species” is in an “ecosystem” or not. They figure out for thems... More »
I Live Here Too
Students take on the role of a scientist as they research a species that they have a close, personal relationship to…themselves! This activity complements the Species Investigation activity, using humans as the focus species. Research questions prompt students to think about why they live here, what resources they need to survive, and how they share these resources with other species in their ha... More »
