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Soil Investigations
Summary: Students will gain a broader understanding of soil and its integral connections with watersheds and ecosystems by exploring and writing creatively about the components of soil and discovering the process of soil erosion, its implications and constructing models for erosion control.
Connection to IslandWood
At IslandWood, students learn about ecosystems and watersheds. Soil plays a vital role in both; it creates the foundation on which organisms build, eat, and root themselves, as well as being an ecosystem in itself, providing an underground world through which organisms travel. In the watershed curriculum students study the pathway of water, what it looks like, how it affects the environment around it, and how humans affect it, both negatively and positively. Through the ecosystems curriculum students explore the range of ecosystems found at IslandWood from marsh to forest, as well as the smaller, less obvious systems of compost and soil.
Lessons Decoded
At the top of the first page of each lesson you will find the lesson title and summary with the list of understandings, knowledge, and skills that IslandWood has developed which are most relevant to that particular lesson (see Using Stewardship as an Integrating Theme in IslandWood's School Programs packet). On the right side of the page you will find suggested age range, venue, materials included in the kit and materials you will have to provide, and the approximate time it will take to complete the lesson. The next part you will see is the preparation segment followed by an introduction to the lesson (including short activities and/or questions that get your students thinking about the activity they are about to participate in).
The core lesson flow follows, set up as a step-by-step progression of activities. Questions that you may embed into the lesson are also included. After the core lesson is completed, the formative assessment and conclusion section further students’ knowledge and appreciation for the topic at hand, while providing an assessment of how well your students have grasped the lesson.
If you find time to do extensions to the core lesson, some options are provided. Materials for these possible extensions are not specifically provided, though some of the materials that are in the kit might come in handy. The final section offers background information which may include some facts and figures that give a larger context to the lesson. You can find additional references at the end.
The Lessons
| Students explore how types of soils are different, what components (mineral and organic) they are made up of, and how those varying components help or hinder life processes. | ||
| Students will observe and measure soil erosion caused by varying degrees of rainfall by building a measuring device out of milk cartons and construction paper. | ||
| Students build models that mimic natural and created landscapes which they use to make and test predictions about why different landscapes are susceptible to erosion. Afterward, they discuss their results and what they could change to reduce erosion. | ||
| Students will investigate soil using their senses followed by writing and sharing group poems that express the properties of soil they observed. | ||
