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Links to other NGSS-aligned lesson plans and units specific to Alaska marine and watershed ecosystems:
e.g., Gulf Watch Alaska Virtual Field Trips

List of recommended Alaska-relevant children’s books, by grade level and NGSS PE
How to Plan a Successful Alaska Field Trip
Beach Etiquette

2016

Instructional Strategies Listed in the Units
Inquiry as a Teaching Strategy
Using Science Notebooks
Questions and Comments to Promote Scientific Thinking (K-2)
Teaching About Controversial Issues

Formative Assessment Probes

The brief, formative assessment resources included with these units are called "assessment probes." They are called "probes" because they are designed to probe and uncover student thinking. Teacher and researcher Page Keeley has written extensively about the probes as part of the Curriculum Topic Study approach to analyzing science and mathematics topics. See the Curriculum Topic Study website for more information. 

These probes are designed to be used diagnostically and formatively. They are intended to help you to tap into students' thinking about particular science topics -- topics that are identified by the National Science Education Standards as significant and developmentally appropriate for the target age level of the unit. While they are intended to sample students' thinking (and to probe for common misconceptions), they are NOT intended to measure what students have learned as a result of the unit content. We encourage you to use these tools--and to develop your own--to better understand each student's development as a learner, and to modify your teaching accordingly.
Ongoing assessment throughout the investigations is important for several reasons. It can reveal when students are confused or have misunderstandings, need more time to investigate, or need more explanation. You can tailor the investigations to meet the needs of your students, and change direction whenever necessary. Frequent assessment does not have to time-consuming or tedious. A quick assessment can give you a lot of information about student comprehension and understanding.

Other Formative Assessment Ideas:

Science Notebooks. If you have asked students to reflect on an investigation, or respond to a question prompt, a quick look at these notebook entries can give you a good idea of where students are in their understanding of a topic. Some prompts that students can respond to in their notebooks are:
What questions do you need to have answered to fully understand where we are going in this investigation?
List three things you learned today, that you didn’t know before.
What was the most important point of our activity in class today?
What was the most surprising idea or concept?
What was the muddiest point of the activity?
What did you learn about _____ today?
How can I help you learn the concept that is giving you the most trouble?
On a scale of 1 through 5 (or 10), with 5 (or 10) being the highest level, how would you rate your understanding of the concepts introduced in today’s activity?

3-2-1 Response. As a quick and useful assessment tool, try using a 3-2-1 response with your students. There are several varieties of this strategy. Students can write responses in their science notebooks, then you can quickly check for understanding.
List 3 new facts or words that you have learned today, 2 ideas or concepts that are new to you, and 1 question you still have.

5-3-1 Response. On your own, identify 5 key ideas, principles or facts. In pairs, share your list and come up with your top 3. At your table, or with another pair of students, identify 1 “MVP” (most valuable point) from today. If you don’t want to use science notebooks for the above questions, students can write their response on a piece of scrap paper and give them to you for review.

Quick Check. Ask students a question to respond to and have everyone write their answer on a piece of paper (or small chalkboard or dry-erase board). They can then hold up their answer at the same time, for you to see.

Multiple Choice Quick Check. Each student is given (or students can make) a set of four cards labeled A, B, C, and D. Ask a multiple choice question, giving students all options. Students each hold up the card that corresponds with the correct answer. At a glance, you can see which students may not fully understand the concept. If students do not have cards, use the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 as your options, and have students hold up the number of fingers that corresponds to the correct answer.

For more information and ideas about formative assessment, check these resources:
The Concept of Formative Assessment Carol Boston

The Value of Formative Assessment

Performance Assessment
These units have been designed around essential questions and enduring understandings. The essential question(s) frame the unit. The enduring understandings are what we want students to walk away with at the end of the unit. We have purposely excluded paper and pencil tests in the evaluation phases of the investigations. Instead, we have included activities/performances that allow students to show evidence that they can explain and/or apply their knowledge and understanding in authentic ways. Each unit of the Alaska Seas and Watersheds curriculum has a culminating activity that provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate understanding.

For more information about authentic or performance assessment, take a look at these resources:Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)
Articles and videos related to performance assessment

Authentic Assessment Toolbox

The Case for Authentic Assessment by Grant Wiggins

For help developing performance assessment inquiry tasks, scoring rubrics, anchor papers along with tips to make it more manageabl mplement new standards and this approach to assessment. see Science Exemplars.

Join our annual Get Your Feet Wet event An online educational celebration of field trips in April and May Register your spring or fall field trip here. Report your field trip and upload photos. Do a local stewardship project (See ideas below.) and add your class to the Alaska Sea Grant Honor Roll.

PLANNING A FIELD TRIP with community partners

Tips on Organizing a School Field Trip
Beach Etiquette
Rules about Collecting and Harvesting on Beaches
Involving Community Partners in the School Native Elders, scientists, other community resource people

RESOURCE LINKS 

Links to Alaska Seas and Watersheds field trip activities, hand-outs, Science Notebook pages, and datasheets

        Resources for water quality monitoring by students

Webinars for K-12 educators:
“It Takes a Watershed . . . to Grow a Salmon” Review of Alaska salmon life cycles, use of different parts of the watershed, and salmon-human connections, and recent research about potential climate change impacts on salmon habitat. Presenters are Laurel Devaney, retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fisheries education specialist, and Sue Mauger, Science Director, Cook InletKeeper. Teaching tips on use of the information in teaching Alaska Seas and Watershed units at various grade levels are included. 3/21/2016

       Life on the Edge: Alaska Intertidal Ecology (Produced by ANROE and UAF Co-operative Extension)

       Alaska Fresh Water Ecology (Produced by ANROE and UAF Co-operative Extension)

PLANNING A SCHOOL OR COMMUNITY CELEBRATION OF SEAS AND WATERSHEDS

Celebrating Alaska Seas and Watersheds in Your School and Community

STEWARDSHIP PROJECT IDEAS

• Participate in a beach or stream clean-up.  Figure out the major sources of the litter or marine debris and brainstorm an action plan to reduce the amount of litter or debris that might harm fish or wildlife (Examples:  a public awareness campaign, trash containers at key places).
• Participate in a stream restoration project such as planting vegetation on stream banks where erosion is a problem.
• Paint signs for storm drains to alert people that it drains to a salmon stream.
• Start a recycling program if your school doesn’t have one. 
• Find out how plastics are being used and disposed of by your school or community. Start a campaign to reduce the use of plastics through re-use and recycling or finding alternatives (e.g., cloth bags for plastic bags).  For plastics that can’t be recycled, look for ways to reduce the amount that ends up in local wetlands, ponds, streams, or on beaches.
• Research a local environmental issue that is causing harm to aquatic and/or marine life. Brainstorm solutions and strategies to solve the problem. Strategies could include:
  -  Making a presentation at a parent night at your school or at a community meeting
  -  Developing and distributing  fliers or posters
  -  Writing news articles
  -  Developing and recording radio spots.
  -  Writing a letter and/or petition to an elected officials requesting a change in policies or regulations that affect the health of the local environment.
• Look for ways that people are helping salmon or working to maintain the health of Alaska’s wetlands, streams, or the ocean. Write thank you letters and ask how you can help.
• Participate in a citizen science or other local environmental monitoring project.

WE AWAIT YOUR IDEAS AND PROJECTS WHICH WILL BE POSTED TO THIS LIST!

Contact Us

Teaching about Alaska Sea and Watersheds can begin or culminate in a celebration! For many teachers and their students, a field trip to the beach, river, lake, pond, or other nearby wetland is the highlight of the year – a time of delight and awe, intrigue and excitement. The many connections and interconnections of marine and freshwater environments and watersheds are a natural theme that can be taught during science, mathematics, language, history, social studies, art, and even music through the crash of a wave, the scuttle of a crab, the drift of a kayak, the bark of a seal, the taste of smoked salmon, the scent of a riverbank. 

One of the best aspects of teaching about Alaska seas and watersheds can be the opportunity for students, teachers and community residents to work together in celebrating the aquatic environment. Students can work together to decorate the whole school; one class can inspire another; older students can do programs for younger ones and vice versa; community members can help with field trips and speakers. An air of excitement can pervade halls and classrooms! 

Preparing for a school-wide spring celebration can begin in the fall, although some schools are so far north in Alaska that their field trips and celebrations happen in the fall as a kick-off for the school year. To get the entire school engaged, propose a celebration and enlist teachers, parents, and other community members to be part of a Sea Week, River Week, or Watershed Week committee. But, if you need to, don’t hesitate to try it on your own or with just a few other teachers. By the following year, when they’ve had a chance to see what you’ve done, others will be ready to join in the celebration.

PLANNING A CELEBRATION

• Brainstorm ideas with other teachers and parents. List names of parents and local resource people who can help make your celebration a success. You’ll find most people pleased to be asked and more than happy to help. 

• Identify community resource people who can be invited to share their local and traditional knowledge with students as speakers and guest teachers (fishermen, net menders, Coast Guard personnel, boat captains, artists, and musicians or storytellers and to suggest potential field trip sites (e.g., beaches, wetlands, lake and river shores, harbors, canneries, seafood markets, salmon spawning streams, marshes, hatcheries, and museums). If your school has bilingual teachers, ask them to identify and help provided cultural connections.  

• One or more parents or teacher can be appointed to coordinate speaker schedules, movies, and field trip transportation, and to generate school district support.

• Contact your chamber of commerce, village council/borough government, and other community groups, inviting them to sponsor complementary events such as festivals, seafood dinners, slide shows, and speakers.

• If your school is inland, consid  er exchanges with a coastal school. Send a selection of items found on your field trips, a class story, or photos. Perhaps they can send you fish stories, pieces of net, floats, seaweed, beach sand. Try to acquire a saltwater aquarium for your school.

• Field trips and other Seas and Watersheds activities make good news features. Consider contacting your local newspaper, television or radio station. Reporters often enjoy going to the beach as much as students do! Provide as much information as possible to all community media.

IDEAS FOR A CELEBRATION

• Have an “underwater” circus, play, or puppet show. Ask students to each pick an animal. Make sea animal hand puppets out of paper bags, with features cut out of construction paper and glued on. Have students plan appropriate acts involving their animal. Practice and then do a program for parents and other classes.

• Have things for children to do during the celebration. Make a puppet area where younger children can play with sea and/or river creature puppets. Create a “hallway scavenger hunt” for older children.

• Hold a scientific conference or poster session for the whole school, letting children share the research they did in their lessons, or pick a service-oriented topic that the whole school can get involved in. “How can we protect our beaches?” “How can we clean up our beaches?”

• Let children be ambassadors for seas and rivers and lead hallway field trips or other activities.
  
  

  FOR MORE GRADE-SPECIFIC IDEAS, SEE THE LAST INVESTIGATION IN EACH OF THE ALASKA SEAS AND WATERSHEDS UNITS

IDEAS FOR DECORATING THE SCHOOL

• Create an underwater world in an alcove, stairwell, classroom, or hallway. Hang colored tissue paper beneath fluorescent lights to act as a filter; hang art projects and seaweed streamers from the ceiling; make murals; ask students to bring water treasures from home such as nets, floats, shells and driftwood.

• Make paper waves from construction paper and tape to window shades. Tape water birds, boats and planes above the waves, and water animals below them.When the shades are drawn, it’s low tide!

• Have the class cut jellyfish shapes from coarse sandpaper. Color the sandpaper heavily. Place a sheet of white paper over each sandpaper jellyfish and iron over it to make a jellyfish impression. 

• Make sea stars. Cover a piece of paper with red finger paint. When the paint has dried, draw and cut out the outline of a sea star. Using a sponge and orange tempera paint, give the sea star a mottled look. Brush tempera on a dried sea star. Sometimes one can be found freshly dead at the beach (but don’t kill any just for an art project!) Cover it with a sheet of newsprint. Holding the paper in place, gently rub over the sea star to transfer its image.

• Make water paintings, using powdered tempera paint, sand and diluted glue. Clean the sand and mix with paint powder (not too much). Keep the colored sand in baby-food jars. Spread glue on paper with a paintbrush and sprinkle sand over the wet glue. Students can make original designs or use ones that have been photocopied. Frame and hang these.

• Make a “water letter mural." Attach a long piece of paper to the wall. Have students use a black marker or crayon to outline an aquatic plant or animal; then color the drawings and label with the first letter of their creatures’ names. When finished, students should notify the teacher so that the animals’ full names can be added.

• Make crabs out of construction paper circles folded in half.

• Cut out butcher paper to make life-sized seals and large fish, paint them and stuff them with crumpled paper.  

• Make life-sized whale shapes using large sheets of paper taped together. 

• Make a river environment in the hallway, connecting to the sea.  

• Have a “read down the hall” activity with riddles and flip books posted for children to read, guess, and check. 

Since its inception in the 1970’s, the Alaska Sea Week program promoted schoolwide thematic teaching about Alaska’s ocean and coasts, field trips, and an annual school and community celebration of the many ways Alaskans depend on, and contribute to, a healthy environment. This emphasis on getting kids outdoors to learn about their local environment is now well established as an effective way to engage students in science, an integrated approach to Science-Technology-Engineering-Math (STEM) education and other cross-disciplinary learning. The emphasis on place-based learning is an effective way to be responsive to the cultural diversity of Alaska’s students.

• 40% of the seafood harvested in American waters comes from the Bering Sea alone.

• Eighty percent of Alaska’s people live on the coast and in some communities.

• In Western Alaska, more than 600 pounds per person of subsistence-harvested animals and plants are consumed annually.

• Fishing for wild salmon is the state’s commercial fishing economic backbone and engages local residents from Ketchikan to Kotzebue above the Arctic Circle.

• Alaska is the U.S. Arctic, which is proving to be one of the most sensitive ecosystems to a warming climate.

The Alaska Seas and Watersheds curriculum was designed to be inquiry based. Each unit includes activities that allow students to be actively involved in their own learning to construct meaning and understanding, as opposed to all knowledge and content being conveyed by the teacher. We have included the use of Science notebooks throughout the units to encourage teachers to promote inquiry and allow students to learn to write about science, articulate their thoughts, feelings, questions and ideas, and to begin to think like scientists.

We chose to use the 5Es Instructional Model for lesson design. This approach allows investigations to build on student previous knowledge, and provides opportunities for students to ask questions, draw their own conclusions, explain, make predictions, observe, describe, and/or communicate. The following phases are included in the 5Es model:

For more information about the 5Es approach, visit the following:

• The BSCS 5E Instructional Model
• Southwest Educational Development Laboratory

Inquiry Resources

National Science Education Content Standard A: Science as Inquiry gives a good explanation of the fundamental concepts and abilities involved with inquiry that were emphasized in these standards. The Next Generation Science Standards continue the emphasis on scientific inquiry "practices," which are defined as formulation of a question that can be answered through investigation but they also emphasize engineering design involving the formulation of a problem that can be solved through designing engineered solutions.

The Alaska Science Content Standards

Standard A: Science as Inquiry and Process

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