Curriculum Highlights

Key Learning Objectives: To learn what a healthy ecosystem is and what can happen when the ecosystem and the web in it is altered or disrupted.

Fieldwork Activities

There will be one on campus field trip and two off campus. On all three students will make "I noticed", "I wonder", and "it reminds me of observations." 

Students will take a field trip from Discovery Science called Down the Drain.

Students will walk to Lynch Creek. On the way they will do a walk and talk.

Participating School: Sonoma Mountain Elementary School

Lead Teachers: Keith Blascow

Grade Level: 6th Grade

Overview: When water goes down the storm drain, where does it go? What happens when something other than water goes down the drain? How can we, as Grant school community members, ensure that pollution is not entering the watershed from our site?These are the essential questions the students will try to answer. In order to do this students will learn about the role of storm drains and how the runoff into them can affect the Petaluma watershed. Students will collaborate in small groups to design a rain garden with the hopes of having it put in at Sonoma Mountain Elementary School. They will present their proposals to teachers, students, and then to whomever is in charge of approving the installation of the rain garden. 

CA Curriculum Standards Addressed

ESS2.C: The Roles of Water in Earth’s Surface Processes

5-ESS3-1: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment; ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems. 

5-PS1-3 Make observations and measurements to identify materials based on their properties.