Water: Can We Keep It Fit for Life?
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
Wildlife and Humanity: Can We Share the Earth?
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Program Overview
The National Geographic Kids Network series is a telecommunications-based program for grades 3-9 that emphasizes collaborative student research on real-world issues. The series includes 7 units for grades 3-6 and 9 units for grades 6-9. Each unit includes a kit and an 8-week telecommunications package.
Telecommunications-Based Unit
Recommended grade level:
3-6.
In What's in Our Water?, a 6-week telecommunications-based curriculum unit, students explore the questions of who uses water, where it comes from, and how pollutants get into it. They determine the source of their school's tap water, explore the definition of "pollutants," and test their tap water for nitrates and chlorines. Students set up an experiment with grass seeds and fertilizer to explore the trade-offs between the beneficial effects of a substance (nitrate) and its potentially harmful effects on water quality. Then, through the National Geographic Society Kids Network--a computer network that links students around the world doing the same unit--they compare their nitrate test results with those reported by students in different parts of the world. As they do so, they look for patterns in the data and examine a map of the network data. In the final week of the unit, students focus on international implications of water pollution.
Throughout the unit, students use computers and software (called NGS Works) to record information, write letters, make graphs, display maps, and send data to other network participants. They also consult electronically with a scientist about the data they collect.
What's in Our Water? includes a teacher's guide, reproducible readings and activity sheets, overhead transparencies, color posters, wall maps, and a diskette of supplemental information to use with NGS Works software.
Key to Content Standards: 5-8 (see app. C)
UNIFYING CONCEPTS AND PROCESSES: Evidence, models, and explanation; change, constancy, and measurement.
SCIENCE AS INQUIRY: Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry; understandings about scientific inquiry.
EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE: Structure of the earth system.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: Understandings about science and technology.
SCIENCE IN PERSONAL AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES: Populations, resources, and environments; natural hazards; risks and benefits; science and technology in society.
HISTORY AND NATURE OF SCIENCE: Nature of science.
Prices:
Curriculum unit, $149.00.
NGS Works software, $199.00. Water nitrate test kit, $49.50. (Contact NGS regarding membership fee for accessing NGS Kids Network.)
Publisher/supplier:
National Geographic Society.
Materials:
Available from commercial suppliers, or in kit.
