Welcome to the GREAT Project Pathway exploring Water Quality!
At each step, you'll have a chance to make choices while creating your own science adventure. By the end of the journey, you will design and conduct a project to solve a real-world problem.
The Power is Yours!
Working in small Investigation Teams, students will:
- G ather data by testing, measuring, monitoring or modelling the phenomenon
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- Outcome: contribute data to a citizen science project
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- R eason and analyze data to find evidence for a claim about the phenomenon
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- Outcome: identify a related problem in the schoolyard
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- E xplore, gain expertise, cultivate empathy, engineer a working model, and examine a case study
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- Outcome: explore similar real-world problems and solutions
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- A ct to solve a to real-world problem by applying knowledge and assessing effectiveness
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- Outcome: design and carry out a class project
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- Teach an authentic audience about the project
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- Outcome: document the project so that it can be replicated by others
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WATER QUALITY STORY LINE
The Water Quality Project Pathway will take you on an adventure to explore a stream and determine whether it is healthy or polluted. After deciding what data to collect, you will conduct tests, analyze results, and make sense of your findings.
Then you will identify a problem with the stream, explore relevant issues, read case studies, check out possible solutions, engineer a working model, and propose a project to improve water quality. When the class agrees on a project, you will work together to make a plan, carry out the project, measure the outcomes, reflect on whether it made a difference, and teach others about how you did it.
To see a flow chart of the Storyline, click here.
Portfolio
Your Portfolio will serve as both journal and scrapbook as you navigate the Water Quality GREAT Project Pathway.
If you have a Google account, you can download the Portfolio to your Drive and save it with a title that includes your name (such as Zalia's Water Project Portfolio). It can also be saved in another format, such as Word.
Print your portfolio so you can take it outside and write in it, or use it as a digital file that you can edit and save. There is a section in the Portfolio corresponding to each part of the project
Deliverable: PROJECT PORTFOLIO (retitled and saved)
Ready to get started?
Teachers
There is an accompanying Educator Guide that provides details about this project pathway including the science standards it covers, supplies needed, instructional strategies used, and research on which it is based. To request a copy, educators must provide a school district or employer email address, be listed on your organization's faculty or staff web page, and answer a few brief questions.
The Captain Planet Foundation offers an ecoSTEM Water Kit that contains many of the supplies needed for field investigations and projects referenced in this Project Pathway. If you don't already have the kit, you can purchase it at cost, request it through Donors Choose, apply for an ecoSTEM Kit Grant, or substitute other materials you may already have on hand.