Environmental Concerns in the Community - A Multi-Class Collaborative Projecct

Students from three schools in grades four, five, seven and eight collaborated to answer the essential question: How do we become aware of local environmental concerns and what can we do to make a difference? Each class contributed a key component to be shared by all. Fourth graders collected water quality data from a local creek while fifth and seventh graders researched wetland and other environmental problems and wrote persuasive essays that advocated action toward correcting them. The seventh graders also wrote informational articles about issues relating to water resources. Eighth graders composed poems about the environment. All the classes shared their ideas and information through individual web sites and e-mails. As the culminating project, the fifth graders used information from the other classes to produce radio public service announcements that promoted environmental awareness and protection.

Core Understandings
• Reading and writing offer the power to inform and to enlighten others.
• Environmental problems can be identified through scientific investigation and analysis.
• Citizens have the ability to impact their environment for better or worse.
• Citizens should take responsibility for addressing problems in their communities.

Learning Objectives
• Students will write a poem using rivers as a theme.
• Students will write a newspaper article about an issue related to water resources.
• Students will write a persuasive essay urging action on some environmental issue.
• Students will conduct scientific investigation and data gathering through water quality monitoring in a local creek using probe technology.
• Students will locate the entire watershed system they live within through maps and satellite images.

This project was designed using the tools at My-ecoach.com and through the Earn While You Learn Fellows Program at the Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill College in Los Altos, California. To view the teacher's guide for this project, visit http://my-ecoach.com/online/teacherguide.php?projectid=5240