Standards Aligned
Next Generation Science Standards, Social Studies (C3), Common Core Math, Common Core ELA
Community Partner(s)
Teachers and students will work with locally-based community partners to engage in learning journeys such Kailua Water Data Collection project, learn with artists who are repurposing plastic waste and engage in beach clean-up activities. Community Partners will help to support the following content integration throughout the unit:
- Social Studies – the invention of plastics + effect of trash on oceans
- Science – currents and how relate to density, sun, equator; forces that drive currents + marine debris
- Math – determine the distance traveled by current + organize and interpret data collected
- English – nonfiction reading of shipping container spill and how currents determined location of lost shipment
- Tech – OSCURS (NOAA model of trash movement), Adrift.org.au (model of currents), NOAA global drifter program (real-time measurements)
- Learning Journeys – Kailua Water Data Collection, Art and Plastics (visit to Spalding House), Beach Clean Up
Essential Question
How does understanding currents influence the human impact on the environment?
Enduring Understanding
- Students will understand how currents form.
- Students will understand how the environment affects currents and currents affect the environment.
- Students will understand how they can make a change to our environment by understanding currents.
Content
- Unit Plan Overview with Specific Standards
- Lesson 1 (Multiple Days)
- Lesson 2 (Multiple Days)
- Lesson 3 (Multiple Days)
- Field Trip
- Unit Resource - Math: Wind and Currents
- Unit Resource - Science: Introduction to Currents
- Unit Resource - Science: Currents and Environment
- Unit Resource - Social Studies: History of Currents
- Student Worksheet - Wind and Currents