EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS
Freshwater Tool Kit activities are multi-disciplinary, interactive, and creatively grow a stronger relationship to a “sense of place” of the Milwaukee area’s waterways, history and communities.
These activities meet the Wisconsin Science Standards for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability to connect, explore and engage students and applicable State of Wisconsin Common Core State Standards. The content also meets the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) and crosscutting concepts of the Next Generation Science Standards as outlined below. These activities connect to earth science, chemistry, math, social studies (history and geography), art, and responsible citizenship disciplines. Freshwater Tool Kit activities will easily fit into your project and inquiry-based lessons to create “critical thinkers” and answer phenomena-based questions occurring in their community, such as, “Why so some Milwaukee area beaches close or are full of stinky green rotting plants?”, “Why is rainwater after a storm dangerous?”, or “Why are fish in Lake Michigan changing sex?”.
The content offers a brief introduction to understand basic and local content on water resources and systems that affect water quality, including how watersheds work and convey storm water and pollutants for treatment or directly into our waterways. This content is an important base of knowledge for students to prepare them for deeper dives in water quality in the community, on other aspects of water resources and/or work with water resource educators. For example, the Freshwater 101 presentation and 3D watershed demo, that can be presented by a water educator or on your own and in the space of a class period, shows students the importance of our waters, how water shaped the Milwaukee area, water resource challenges and successes in improving water quality and the global water crisis. This 30,000-foot view of freshwater will create a greater connection and respect for this resource and help cultivate the realization that Milwaukee area residents are lucky to live in this freshwater-rich region. This presentation can be adapted to the time and content that makes sense for your lessons. Each student will also become empowered to become part of the solution to improve water quality through receiving easy ideas in a copy of the Simple Solutions Guide that is also available in Spanish. Activities in the Freshwater Tool Kit will enhance student’s ability to understand the importance of freshwater and impacts on our lives, ecosystems health, economy and quality of life.