Teachers from the Port Townsend School District will share their two years of work across all grade bands building understanding of the issues surrounding ocean acidification in a coastal community. This workshop will include information about the Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEE) and collaboration between community partners, teachers and students at multiple grade levels across the district. Collaborating community partners include the Jefferson County Marine Resources Committee, the Port Townsend Marine Science Center and Fort Worden State Park to design and deliver the professional development to cohort teachers and MWEEs for students. The teacher-designed projects demonstrate 3-dimensional implementation of the Washington State Science and Learning Standards. This work is funded by a NOAA B-WET Grant.
""This workshop will present drinking water as a resource to be explored, inspected, protected, and embraced. Just as a wine steward/sommelier might present varieties in wines, or a beekeeper/apiaris might present differences in honey, this presentation will provide attendees the opportunity to discuss and inspect a wide range of quality issues in drinking water.
A variety of drinking waters, from different locations and treatment facilities will be examined as to their similarities, differences, and contaminants.
This session provides numerous real-world, cross curricular learning activities, lab experiences, and open-ended explorations that easily intertwine and make interdisciplinary connections to chemistry, math, technology, and the social sciences.
Some of the resources, activities, open-ended experiments, and extended explorations that will be demonstrated and available as takeaways for attendees:
Maps, and Links to Maps of :
a) EPA’s: Labeled “Impaired waters”; EnviroMapper; and others
b) Water contaminant maps
c) Harmful Algal Blooms
d) EWG’s Tap Water Database maps
e) Water Quality Portal maps
f) USGS water data reports and maps
g) Aquifer maps
Simple Open-Ended Lab investigations:
1. Investigate hidden chemicals/colors in blackish water---simple coffee filter chromatography
2. Investigate how unseen, dissolved chemicals in water CAN affect cells—cells swelling/shrinking in The Carrot Experiment
3. Investigate dissolved minerals in a variety of water samples- simple testing procedures for determining hard and soft water.
4. Investigate water filters—testing different convenient store and science supply store filters for their ability to “catch” suspended particles in a variety of water samples
5. Use pH test strips, and nitrate/nitrite water quality test strips to investigate acid/base, and nitrogen, characteristics of a variety of water samples
Handouts on Related Movies and Books:
1. Movies
a) Erin Brockovich- features the water pollutant chromium-6, or hexavalent chromium
b) Death of a River: The Colorado River Delta
c) National Geographic- Strange Days of Planet Earth-Part4- Troubled Waters
d) Living Downstream
e) Freshwater’s Macro Microplastic Problem
f) FrontLine: Poisoned Waters
2. Books
a) What the Eyes Don’t See
b) Where the Water Goes
c) When Smoke Ran Like Water
d) White Wash
e) Fateful Harvest
f) Parts per Million
g) Toms River
h) Raising Elijah
i) Poison Spring
In-depth explorations
a) Algae blooms
b) Water treatment Facilities- “treatment” is not what you are expecting
c) Drinking water sources
d) Research one of the five most pervasive drinking water contaminants linked to cancer nationwide, map it’s occurrences nationwide, and describe what is being done, if anything, to keep these contaminants out of public drinking water supplies.
e) Finding and revealing tap water contaminants does little to combat it--- take action"
Participants will review the key elements of Next Generation Instruction, then relate these to a specific performance task. Then experience formative assessment as a learner, and summative assessment as an instructor. Participants will identify specific 3-D learning for a PE in their own practice and use tools to create a rubric for assessing student learning. Participants will identify purpose of both formative and summative assessment and how one informs the other.
"The Next Generation Science Standards call for all students to analyze problems and create solutions. Green chemistry is the science of creating safe, energy efficient and less toxic processes and products that provide sustainable solutions for the environmental problems facing our society today. Green chemistry provides a framework and lens for learning, teaching and investigating chemistry concepts. Green chemistry principles and practices are used in industry and academia because of addressing the triple bottom line of cost, safety and performance.
Many traditional high school labs use chemicals that cannot be put down the drain and often put our students at risk if not handled properly. In this workshop, types of reactions, endothermic, exothermic and Le Chatelier's principle are all concepts that will be featured using inexpensive safer materials. Participants will collaborate in small groups to do endothermic, exothermic, and equilibrium labs with safer more cost-effective chemicals guided by experienced teachers. In the labs, students are asked to assess the hazard of the materials in their labs and use Claims Evidence Reasoning (CER) to select the safer chemicals for their experiments. Participants will learn about open access resources featuring safer green chemistry replacement labs along with project based learning labs based on sustainable industrial innovations."
"Participants will explore online simulations and use online tools for collaboration. The inquiry-based activities encourage participants to think about concepts and to think with concepts. The simulations support academic concepts for surface to conceptual depth of knowledge.
10 mins: Intro
10 mins: Discuss what does STEM look like in the classroom? What do you want STEM/STEAM to look like in your school?
30 mins: Explore simulations that support STEM and ways to engage student discourse. Three formative assessment classroom techniques will be incorporated into the session.
10 mins: Questions and closure"