Patzke+Memo+One

Karin Patzke EcoEd January 27, 2014 Evaluations of Environmental Curriculums Memo #1

__Name of the Curriculum:__ Raising Your Water IQ: A Water Conservation Curriculum for Middle School [] - this particular curriculum is part of six programs designed for ‘kids’ at different levels to engage with water conservation. “Raising your water IQ” is the only completely formulated curriculum, while the other five are a variety of games, online resources and print outs.

__What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating?__

The Texas Water Development Board, a state agency reporting to the state legislative and “responsible for long-range planning and water project financing.”[1]

__What is the overall mission of the organization?__

The TWDB is a state agency whose mission is “to provide leadership, planning, financial assistance, information, and education for the conservation and responsible development of water for Texas.”[2] In Texas water resources are controlled at the local level by water boards, elected groups of citizen who control and lease water resources to the regional community. Because these boards are often limited in scope and resources, the TWDB provides extension information about water development and resource conservation. TWDB states, “to accomplish its goals of planning for the state's water resources and for providing affordable water and wastewater services, the TWDB provides water planning, data collection and dissemination, financial assistance and technical assistance services to the citizens of Texas.”[3] To meet these goals, the agency provides a variety of literature on best practices, agriculture, public education, and outreach as well as extensive maps and data concerning surface and ground water.

__What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization?__

There is little information about the education mission specifically. However, the teacher’s guide introduces the guide to map onto Texas educational standards: In this curriculum, water conservation messages and concepts stem from core academic standards detailed in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). These hands-on activities engage student interest in learning through our natural affinity for water.[4]

__What does the curriculum module aim to teach? In other words: what are the learning outcomes supposed to be?__

The teaching guide identifies these goals:
 * Enhance a student’s ability to make sound environmental decisions based on an understanding of science;
 * Foster student awareness of the need for water conservation;
 * Help students discover and practice water conservation strategies;
 * Increase a sense of stewardship for local water resources; and
 * Establish patterns of responsible water consumption.[5]

__Do you think the curriculum is appropriately designed to produce the intended learning outcomes?__ At 120 pages, there are five ‘chapters’ to this curriculum and each attempt to build on the knowledge created in the process. There are a variety of activities that can be swamped between chapters or modeled to fit multiple assignments. Some of the chapters have specific learning objectives and these appear (to my untrained eye) to map onto TEKS standards, which seem focus on basic math and science skills. There are a wide variety of tasks, included created models, measuring and simple math skills and writing up the results of experiments. The teacher guide sometimes gives very detailed instructions to facilitate learning and at other times seems vague. To directly answer this prompt, it seems like the last two goals listed in the previous section seem more reliant on the classroom teacher facilitating connections between the activities the students do and concerns of stewardship and responsibility through class discussions and collaborations or comparisons between multiple groups.

__Does this curriculum teach the kind of literacies advocated by EcoEd?__

The last two goals of stewardship and responsibility are only vaguely addressed in the curriculum. Stewardship only appears once (as a goal) and responsibility is only addressed through a teacher assessment of collaborative work.

__What could be layered into this curriculum so that it addresses more of the learning outcomes advocated by EcoEd?__ There are probably multiple ways of addressing these concerns, including more direct guides for teachers to facilitate discussions or more direct ‘assignments’ or ‘tasks’ that specifically address stewardship and responsibility.

[1] https://www.twdb.state.tx.us/about/index.asp [2] ibid. [3] ibid. [4] From the teaching guide for Raising Your Water IQ. https://www.twdb.state.tx.us/conservation/education/doc/RIQ_TeacherGuide.pdf [5] ibid.