Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide Cfwep.Org • Clark Fork Watershed Education Program Skyline Park • Butte, Montana Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide Table of Contents Chapter I. Introduction and Welcome 1. Overview of Skyline Park 2. Map of Skyline Park 3. How to use this Guide and the Activities II. About the NGSS and Guide Alignment 1. Background of NGSS and the K-12 Framework 2. Skyline Park Guide and the Montana Content Standards for Science Instruction III. Building Your Content Knowledge 1. Site History 2. Habitat Types of Skyline Park 3. Pond Life 4. Water Quality 5. Stormwater 6. Seed Pod Islands and Pollinators 7. Geology and Soils 8. Restoration IV. Activities 1. Science Note Booking 1.1: Science Note Booking About Skyline Park 2. History 2.1: Write Your Own History for this Site 2.2: Create a Timeline for this Area 3. Mapping the Skyline Park Site 3.1: Where is That?: Mapping the Skyline Park Site 4. Pond Life – Microbes 4.1: Wanderers, Drifters and Floaters, Oh My! 5. Pond Life – Aquatic Macroinvertebrates 2 Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide 5.1-Part 1: What’s That Squirming and Swimming in the Water? Collection and Identification of Pond Macroinvertebrates 5.1-Part 2: What are Those Macroinvertebrates Telling Us? Aquatic Macros as Biological Indicators 5.2: Who's My Mommy? Matching Aquatic Insect Young with their Adult Form 6. Pond Life – Terrestrial Animals 6.1: Crunch Game! The Aquatic Food Chain Game 7. Water Quality 7.1, Option 1: What Life Can This Water Support? Water Quality - WWMD Kits and Data Upload 7.1, Option 2: Water Quality – Vernier Lab Quest Units and Probes 8. Riparian Habitats 8.1: Build Your Healthy Riparian Habitat 9. Native Plants at Skyline Park 9.1: Measuring Biodiversity Success of Forb Sods 9.2: Where’s the Structural Diversity? V. Skyline Park Teacher's Guide Glossary VI. Appendices 3 Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide Chapter 1: Introduction and Welcome Ch1.1 Overview of Skyline Park Introduction Skyline Park is the result of collaboration between Butte-Silver Bow City/County government and the Skyline Sportsmen’s Association to restore and develop the 57-acre parcel into a natural, passive recreational park and outdoor classroom. This outdoor classroom contains a children’s fishing pond and is part of a natural wetland, which is supplied by Resse Canyon Creek and Tramway Creek. Funding for the project was provided by the State of Montana-Department of Justice’s Natural Resource Damage Program. Prior to funding, this site was a vacant lot, used by residents of Butte-Silver Bow as an informal ATV area. The area was filled with debris and infested with a host of noxious and nuisance weed species. For the first time in decades, the area is now serving to benefit Butte-Silver Bow, its schools and its residents. Skyline Park has been designed to provide an educational experience for a variety of users. Whether you are a teacher, student, or passer-by on the trail, you should be able to take in the educational opportunities provided by the site. A series of interpretive signs lead users to explore the wonders of the immediate environment. 4 Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide Ch1.2 Map of Skyline Park This image cannot currently be displayed. 5 Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide Ch 1.3 How to Use this Guide For teachers, this guide provides everything needed to use Skyline Park as an outdoor classroom. The guide includes both content and activities. The content sections are intended to help the teacher enhance their own knowledge. While some of the information presented can and should be shared with students, the content is written at an undergraduate level for the teacher’s benefit. The activities are intended for teacher’s to share with students, using some of the content knowledge to expand and elaborate on the activities. Each activity section includes objectives and guiding questions for students, brief background information, a list of materials, the procedure for conducting the activity, suggestions for extending the activity, and a list of resources. We have refrained from providing details about how long activities will take since each activity can be squeezed into one day or extended over several days. It is up to you, the teacher, and what your curriculum needs are. The intention of the Cfwep.Org curriculum team is that all curricular areas will be explored through the science inquiry process. Skyline Park provides a unique opportunity for teachers to integrate all curricular areas including reading, writing, social studies, and science, while utilizing the park. Students will be able to complete multiple-step scientific studies and practice the science process skills throughout the course. Teachers can be as expansive as they wish within the park, evolving lessons into long-term projects, such as weather and seasonal monitoring, site maintenance, and further site improvement. The content included in the Skyline Park Teachers’ Guide was developed by the Cfwep.Org curriculum team. Appropriate credit for other content is duly given within the guide. Through comprehensive site study, students will become excellent stewards of their local environments. The content is designed to be place-based, meaning that the content is relevant to this particular site and its history. It is the hope of the project leadership team that Skyline Park will become an integral part of the science curriculum for teachers in the Butte school district. 6 Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide We have also provided a glossary of important terms for both teachers and students to review. Most bolded words in the body of the guide are listed in the glossary. Lastly, we have included appendices that contain datasheets created by Cfwep.Org staff or others, supplements to activities, and additional information that illustrates certain points or procedures. Skyline Park during its construction. Photo by: F. Ponikvar 7 Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide Chapter 2: About NGSS and Guide Alignment Chapter 2.1 Background of NGSS and the K-12 Framework Introduction The Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide has been developed from the perspective of science education as presented in the National Research Council’s (NRC) report, A K-12 Framework for Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. The Framework, as the report is now commonly called, outlines three dimensions of science education. The three dimensions attempt to move science education from a content-driven endeavor to a closer representation of the work of a scientist. The three dimensions are: Scientific and Engineering Practices; Crosscutting Concepts; and Disciplinary Core Ideas. The greatest change in the Framework and the resulting Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is the focus on Science and Engineering Practices and Cross-Cutting Concepts. The NRC called for a shift in science education, expecting educators to shift how science is delivered in classrooms, employing more experiential and research-driven pedagogical tools rather than relying heavily on vocabulary and memorization. This model attempts to bridge science and engineering, with students and teachers focusing more deeply in key content areas rather than attempting to cover great breadth of topics. On the following page, a graphic representation of the three dimensions of the Framework is illustrated. The NRC intends that the three, while distinct and able to be presented in isolation, are meant to be integrated, or three-dimensional. Teachers should think about the pedagogical approaches necessary to illustrate not only a disciplinary core idea, but what practices will engage students to discover that core idea and what other areas of science does this core idea connect to (crosscutting concepts). It is noteworthy that the standards now focus more deeply on the content and concepts that are related across science disciplines as well as how scientists engage in their work, i.e., the science practices. 8 Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide Overview of the Science and Engineering Practices The Next Generation Science Standards documents set forth the guiding principles for the science and engineering practices as follows: • Students in grades K-12 should engage in all eight practices over each grade band. • Practices grow in complexity and sophistication across the grades. 9 Skyline Park Teacher’s Guide • Each practice may reflect science or engineering. • Practices represent what students are expected to do and are not teaching methods or curriculum. • The eight practices are not separate; they intentionally overlap and interconnect. • Performance expectations focus on some but not all capabilities associated with a practice. • Engagement in practices is language intensive and requires students to participate in classroom science discussions. From NGSS and Lead States, 2013. Next Generation Science Standards, Volume 2, pp 48-50. The practices, as their name implies, are meant to be visited and re-visited throughout a student’s educational career. Just as a violist takes years of practice to develop her skills, so too does a scientist take years to develop hers. The National Research Council states, “A focus on the practices (in plural) avoids the mistaken impression that there is one distinctive approach common to all science—a single ‘scientific method’.” With these conceptual changes about science and the practices of science in mind, teachers will need to further develop pedagogical skills to help students utilize the practices given any context, content idea, or classroom activity. The Framework document dedicates 81 pages to the discussion of the practices and their importance for creating a scientifically literate citizenry. For the purposes of this guide, the simple graphic on the previous page is presented. Teachers should review the Framework and NGSS documents in order to better familiarize themselves with the practices and the progressions of skill for each practice at particular grade-levels.