Erosion Around Your School [Flip Video Cameras in Action!]

Students will be able to:
„« Understand how critical thinking and scientific inquiry are used to solve problems and make informed decisions.
„« Understand how there is observable change over different scales of time.

Essential Questions:

„« How do the parts of the Earth interact and affect one another?
„« How does human activity impact global climate?

Content Objectives:
„« Various processes alter the Earth¡¦s surface.
„« Humans impact the global climate.

Knowledge and Skills:

„« Water, glaciers, winds, waves, and gravity are weathering and erosion agents.
„« Human activity impacts global climate.

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The students will take the video cameras to take pictures of the area around the school. After comparing their pictures, they are to find obvious locations where erosion has been identified around the school. The areas where my students looked were evident throughout the parking areas, the entrances of the building, the track area, and the recreation area.

Students will then create a 3-dimensional rendition of the school and the surrounding land, using clay, dirt, grass, rocks, and other created materials. They will use the document camera to show small mock-ups of areas that were showing evidence of erosion. The concept is to show how erosion could happen with light rain [as in a spray bottle], a downpour [as in a large dropper], and the wind [as in a fan].
Students will also be creating a hypothesis as to what causes specific areas of erosion around the school. Then they will take videos of actual sites before the rain. While it was raining, some students will need to video the areas they were studying.
They will want to continue studying the areas throughout the year, to see what the long-term effects will be. They will also want to see what ice and rain will do to the same areas. Each will see if their individual hypothesis was true, and as to how the erosions would occur.

The students may include Language Arts with this project by writing in a journal throughout the year. They could also include photograhy by placing photographs of the changes of their designated site throughout the year. Place these pictures in their journals.

To tie it to mathematics and geometry, you can have students draw what they see and map the changes. They can measure the differences, creating graphs or 3-dimensional drawings.

Remember, this is to be a long-term project.
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Science and Technology Standards used on this assignment:

S5: TSW develop understandings about the relationship between science and technology.
B1: TSW develop an understanding that technology is applied science.
5.1.1: technology is the application of scientific knowledge for functional purposes
5.1.2: creativity, imagination, and a broad scientific knowledge base are required to produce useful results
5.1.3: science advances new technologies
S6: TSW develop an understanding of personal and community health, population growth, natural resources, environmental quality, natural and human-induced hazards, and science and technology in local, national, and global settings.
B4: TSW understand the effect of natural and human-influenced hazards.
6.4.1: natural processes of earth may be hazardous for humans
6.4.2: there is a need to assess potential risk and danger from natural and human-induced hazards