Water+Resources+Activity+(Mark+Rovereto)

[] (Sustaining Our Water Resources)
 * Sustaining Our Water Resources**

This curriculum module, geared toward grade levels 6-8, was developed cooperatively by the Center for Economic Education at Virginia Tech, the Virginia Environmental Endowment, and the Virginia Center for Economic Education.
 * What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating?**

The goals of this combined effort by the three aforementioned organizations are:
 * What is the mission of the organization?**
 * To improve the quality of the environment by using its capital to encourage all sectors to
 * Prevent pollution
 * Conserve natural resources
 * Promote environmental literacy
 * Help students understand basic economic principles and develop the decision-making skills needed to be informed citizens, productive employees, and wise consumers.

The philosophy under which the goals of the cooperative effort between the Center for Economic Education at Virginia Tech, the Virginia Environmental Endowment, and the Virginia Center for Economic Education were formed is one focused on the importance of understanding the possibility of intervention in many of the issues discussed in their curricula.
 * What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization?**

For the Sustaining our Water Resources activity, lesson objectives include:
 * What does the curriculum module aim to teach? In other words: what are the learning outcomes supposed to be?**
 * Increasing understanding of water resource use, depletion and pollution
 * Learning how land use practices affect the quantity and quality of this limited resource
 * Analyzing how water resources can be managed more sustainably
 * Understanding the complexities of non-point source pollution

This lesson is quite strict and limited in what it aims to teach, and to its credit it does accomplish these limited goals fully. The interactivity built into this lesson plan is also good, enabling children to act creatively in planning out land use around bodies of water. The complexity here is added through the division of the participants into three groups. Each group is given different levels of information on their development project. With this information in mind, these development plans will be developed incrementally. The plans will then be analyzed for their pollution patterns and a discussion will follow about the importance of environmental knowledge and consideration in land development near water systems.
 * Do you think the curriculum is appropriately designed to produce the intended learning outcomes?**

Despite the simplistic goals laid out in the activity documentation itself, the module effectively addresses several of the literacies the EcoEd Research Group advocates. In teaching children about the complexities of water pollution from various sources, children gain an understanding that their own actions have an array of proximate and far-off effects. The activity also suggests including a short discussion by a local planner or representative from a conservation group, which also gives children experience with and a better understanding of the role government plays into the issue at various levels. In discussing the different ways that land can be used and organized to limit the amount of pollution the enters the water system, the potential for change is shown to the students, yet another key literacy we advocate.
 * Does this curriculum teach the kind of literacies the EcoEd Research Group advocates?**

This module covers many of the learning outcomes the EcoEd Group advocates, and could be used as is if desired. Another benefit of the module is in its relatively short duration. This could be done within one day, probably with a 3-4 hour time block. With that said, there are a few additions that could be made to this module in order to enhance its coverage of the literacies it already addresses. In the activity, there are pollution “points” assigned to each form of pollution included. The hazards of each source and type of pollution could be elaborated upon to give more of a context and assign more importance to addressing this issue. Another addition could be more interactivity. Perhaps models could be made, and “pollution” could be added with food dyes, or even acids and letting them test for pollution with chemical indicators. It could then be explained that the danger of pollution is that even small amounts in an ecosystem can cause drastic and long-term effects, and are usually harder to detect than just using an indicator. This leads to another possible idea of folding in other concepts, like environmental justice. The discussion in the activity could lead to where people live in terms of proximity to the water and proximity to the sources of pollution.
 * What could be layered into this curriculum so that it addresses more of the learning outcomes that the EcoEd Group advocates?**