Character Education Newsletter s3

Self Control Middle School - March 2011 Character Education Newsletters Broward County Air Quality Program March’s character trait is self-control, and with National Wildlife Week this month & Water Go Green Matters Day on March 12th, we are reminded that we need to practice self-control when it Climate Change comes to protecting our environment. We need to control the amount of waste we generate, Broward County Kids fossil fuels we burn, garbage we discard, and water we use each and every day. Important Corner Broward County Public water saving actions we can take include taking shorter showers, washing only full loads of Schools Environmental dishes or clothes, replacing grass with drought-tolerant shrubs, and controlling the amount of Stewardship time we allow the faucet to run. Enter the Clean Air Poster Contest! Upcoming Events The Broward County Air Quality Program is proud to announce the 2011 Clean Air Poster March: Contest. This year’s contest theme is Carbon (Re)Cycle - Think about what you use, how Clean Air Poster Contest you use it, and where it goes when you’re done. March 12: Water Matters Day All winning poster contest entries will be featured in the 2012 Clean Air Calendar. For contest rules and the list of applicable Next Generation Sunshine Standards, visit April: www.broward.org/Kids/Contests/Pages/KidsClubContests.aspx Clean Air Poster Contest

The Broward County Pollution Prevention, Remediation & Air Quality Division continues to incorporate Character Education into its educational efforts. Each month the newsletter will Recommended Reading for relate core values to science in an effort to educate students about good character and the March & April: importance of protecting our natural resources. 365 Ways to Live Green – This year’s newsletters support the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for Science. Your Everyday Guide to Saving the Environment Grade 6 – Big Idea 1: The Practice of Science; Big Idea 2: The Characteristics of Scientific Knowledge; Big Idea 3: The Role of Theories, Laws, Hypotheses & Models By Diane Gow McDilda Grade 7 – Big Idea 1: The Practice of Science; Big Idea 2: The Characteristics of Scientific (printed on 100% post- consumer recycled paper) Knowledge; Big Idea 3: The Role of Theories, Laws, Hypotheses & Models; Big Idea 6: Earth Structures Grade 8 - Big Idea 1: The Practice of Science; Big Idea 2: The Characteristics of Scientific Knowledge; Big Idea 3: The Role of Theories, Laws, Hypotheses & Models @Broward Environment

What’s Your Habitat? Students explore basic survival needs of humans and wildlife by drawing their own homes and neighborhoods. In this activity, students will be able to name all the four basic survival needs of humans; and recognize that humans share the same basic needs as all other things. All forms of life, from humans to cows to bears to flowers, need certain things to live. Survival depends on getting enough food, water, cover and places to raise young. Animals, plants, fungi and microbes share these same survival needs, though it is a little more challenging to think about how plants and microbes meet these needs. This activity focuses exclusively on animals. (Educators may challenge older students to look at the needs of plants and microbes as well.)

Animals must have a place to live where they can get food, water, cover and places to raise young. Cover may mean protection from sun or other elements as well as protection from other animals (called predators) that may eat the animal. Places to raise young can also mean a protected spot, like a bird’s nest, or an area with specific qualities that enable offspring to survive. For example, monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants, which provide some cover as well as a food source for growing monarch larvae. Therefore, a monarch habitat must include milkweed plants for the butterfly to raise young. Do humans have the same requirements as animals? They do. Humans build houses for cover and places to raise young. Other animals may build nests or burrows for protection or cover. Still others take cover where they find it, under trees or in a large herd. But for all animals (including humans), home is much bigger than a house. It’s the entire neighborhood where an animal gets the food, water and cover it needs to survive. Scientists call this home or place its habitat. For humans, habitat may mean the neighborhood or city in which they live.

Procedure 1. Ask students, What do all humans need to survive? Which of these do plants and animals also require? Focus on the four basic survival needs true for all living things. Guide class to generate a list with these needs: food, water, cover and places to raise young. Write the list on the board. Students may give other answers, which you can put with the four major categories.

2. Ask, Where do humans get the food, water, cover and places to raise young they need to survive? Generate a list of student answers. On the board, you may want to draw a picture of your own home/neighborhood to show food, water, cover and places to raise young.

3. Pass out art materials to students and ask them to draw their home. They can start with a picture of the house or building where they live. Tell them to leave space around the house to add other parts of their neighborhood where they meet their basic survival needs. Have them each pick a color to represent each of the four basic needs and write it on the bottom of the paper.

4. Ask, Where do people get food? (Perhaps from a supermarket or garden?) Where do they store and cook food? Have them add these places labeled with “food” (in the food color) to the drawing. Guide students to think about other needs. Where does the water they drink and bathe with come from? Is it from a well in the area or is it piped into their home from a reservoir? Where do they go to escape heat and sun or rain and snow? What other habitat elements do they need to survive? To think about places to raise young, they should consider themselves the “young” and think about how their parents met this need. Add pictures of these to their drawings of “home.” Use the selected colors to label pictures to show what it provides for them (i.e. water).

5. Upon completion, have each student share his or her picture with the class. On the board, note how many of the habitat elements (food, water, cover and places to raise young) students included on drawings. Which needs appear on everyone’s drawing? Tell students that they have just drawn their own habitat. Habitat is home, the place where humans get all that they need to survive. Like all animals, habitat is where humans satisfy the most basic survival requirements - the food, water, cover and places to raise young. (For those who didn’t include the four habitat elements have them go back and draw the missing ones in.) Display drawings.

6. As a wrap-up, compare the students’ habitats to pictures of animal habitats in the wild. Use pictures of animals that build a home to live in, such as an ant, or a bird. Then show pictures of animals that do not alter their environment, but find cover all the same – a snake that lives between rocks, for example. Discuss how the habitats are the same or different. Ask students, How might animals find the food, water, cover and places to raise young in the habitat? Modifications for Older Students 1. Follow the procedure for younger students, but do not provide as much detail as to the source of their basic habitat elements. Instead, challenge students to identify all the places that help them meet their basic needs within their territory (neighborhood).

2. After students draw their habitat, challenge them to design and draw a Mars colony. (Alternatively, focus on designing a space station or a colony on the moon.) Have them think about the basic needs of living things and how they would meet these on a faraway planet that’s very different from Earth. Have them research how the physical environment of Mars (or space or moon) differs from Earth’s. They will need to include: a food source, a water source, an oxygen source (air is a critical need for living things, but one taken for granted on Earth), cover from the harsh environment and places to raise young.

3. Once drawings are finished, have students present their ideas to the class and display. Discuss choices that students made. Ask students if they think that humans depend on the physical environment of Earth to survive?

Extensions Have the class do a large mural of their combined habitat. Basing the mural on the individual habitat pictures students drew, compile a large drawing as a group, adding in the different features students identified. Perhaps a whole neighborhood habitat will emerge, which can remain on the wall of the classroom and be referred back to in later lessons.

Assessment Have students keep a journal for a day or a week in which they will write down each time they eat, drink water, sleep in a safe shelter, find cover to escape the heat or cold and where and how they found these things in their habitat. Did they ever leave the habitat they drew during this activity? If so, what were they looking for? Do they think it was a “basic survival need” that should now be added to the drawing? Review their journals for evidence of correct application of habitat ideas to their own lives.

Have students observe an animal at home or on the schoolyard for up to a week. Keep a similar journal to that outlined above for their observations.

Endangered Species: What and Where? In this activity, students will explore some of the many endangered and threatened species in North America. The following information will be useful in guiding your students to investigate National Wildlife Federation’s Keep the Wild Alive (KWA) focus species, and then to explore local species on their own. Extinct species are plants or animals that once lived on Earth, but no longer live anywhere in the world. Examples include the dodo, passenger pigeon, dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.

Although extinction is a natural process that has gone on throughout time, human activities have greatly accelerated the rate of extinction in modern times. An endangered species is a plant or animal that is in danger of becoming extinct in the very near future, because its numbers are declining rapidly, or its habitat is being rapidly destroyed. Threatened species are plants or animals which are not yet endangered but whose population numbers are falling unnaturally quickly. These species face significant conservation challenges and scientists feel they must be carefully monitored to prevent them from becoming endangered.

Procedure

1. Explain to students that they will be learning about some amazing animals that they may not have heard of before. Show your students each pictures of endangered species. As you show each one, ask if the students have heard of or seen this animal. Do they know where it lives? What it eats? If there are not many, explain that the reason they may not have seen the animal is that there are very few of these animals today. These animals are called “endangered,” meaning they are unusually rare and could be in danger of disappearing altogether. Point out on a large map of the U.S. where some of these animals live, being sure to emphasize those that are present in your local region or state.

2. In small groups, have students create and illustrate their own Species Book. Have students draw this animal for each letter they have represented on a species card, each on a separate piece of paper. They can also draw what it eats, where it lives.

3. Ask students, What is one thing that your animal has in common with the species card illustration you were looking at (i.e., large, hairy, has big eyes)? Depending on their writing level, students should write that characteristic under their drawing, or you can write them on the board.

4. Depending on how much time is available, you may want to rotate the group of Species Cards so that each group eventually gets to see all of the cards. When all the student illustrations are complete, assemble a class species book, including copies of the Species Cards and all the illustrations the students created, grouped by letter. These illustrations may also be used for bulletin board creation, animal letter mobiles, or composing an animal alphabet song!

5. Have students create a bar graph showing the number of species in each U.S. region (i.e., Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, West). Do they notice any patterns?

6. Working from a local map, have students research local endangered and threatened species and create a local endangered species map to accompany their U.S. map. This local map should show ranges and overlaps, and be labeled with species names.

7. Have students investigate what kinds of efforts are underway locally to protect endangered species in the region. What organizations are working on this issue? How can students become involved?

Ask students to write or draw up a plan for how they would add/change their schoolyard to attract several of their local endangered species, or if they think it would not be possible, why. Have each student group present their map to the rest of the class, sharing some of the key facts about each species from their endangered species, and what they discovered about their local species. Be sure that students have included habitat requirements, home range, threats the species is facing, and why it is endangered. After the presentations, again emphasize that the species your students have learned about are only part of the total number of species that are endangered in the United States, and in the whole world. Scientists once thought that there was no life on the deep sea floor due to the lack of sunlight. However, in the 1970’s, complete ecosystems were discovered on the deep sea floor that depend on energy from chemical reactions rather that from sunlight. Which conclusion can be drawn from this discovery? A. Organisms are able to survive under any conditions. B. Observations will always lead to the discovery of new organisms. C. Organisms may be discovered in remote areas and extreme conditions. D. Observations collected on existing organisms can apply to any organism. Answer: C

Water Matters Day The 9th Annual Water Matters Day will be held on Saturday, March 12, 2011 9:00 am – 3:00 pm Tree Tops Park in Davie, FL Exhibits at Water Matters Day demonstrate ways to save and protect water through landscape best management practices and through indoor conservation. Look for the Air Quality Program exhibit with fun interactive games and activities.

National Wildlife Week is March 13-20, 2011 In 2011, National Wildlife Federation (NWF) celebrates its 75th anniversary. To mark this milestone, National Wildlife Week will be all about wildlife—the wildlife we’ve protected for 75 years and the wildlife we are still working to protect today. Visit the NWF website for free downloadable posters, fun activities and project ideas for every day of the week. Join us for the celebration! Website: www.nwf.org/Get-Outside/Be-Out-There/Events/National-Wildlife-Week.aspx

Earth Hour 2011 At 8.30pm on Saturday March 26th, Earth Hour will celebrate a worldwide commitment to ongoing change for the betterment of the one thing that unites us all – the planet. Your journey can start by signing up at www.earthhour.org and adding your voice to the hundreds of millions across the globe who have already spoken with their actions. Spread the Word!!! Subscribe to our electronic Character Education Science FCAT Warm-up Newsletters Today! The monthly edition of this newsletter is distributed only through a FREE electronic e-mail subscriber list. E-mail the Broward County Pollution Prevention, Remediation & Air Quality Division at [email protected] to ensure that you continue to receive this valuable curriculum resource. The newsletters are also available on our Environmental Kids Club web site at www.broward.org/kids. Archived copies of the newsletter are also available through the School Board’s BEEP system.