Eliciting Background Knowledge

Begin by activating student background information by asking students to interview a partner, asking the following questions. 

1. Have you ever seen or explored a lake, pond, river or stream? Tell me what you noticed. 

2. Where have you seen water go when it rains? 

3. Have you ever heard of or seen a flood happen? What happened?

Once each student has had a chance to interview and be interviewed. Ask students to share out about what their partners said. Highlight any similarities or differences you notice in students’ ideas and experiences. 

Anchoring Phenomenon: A Local Flood Event 

Next, share with students about a local flood event you have discovered. Have student pairs take time to read about, look at photos of and consider data about this flood event. Ask to discuss what they notice about what happened and what they wonder about the flood event. After students have looked at data and photos, ask them to share what they think caused the flood event to happen. Encourage students to refer to the data to support their thinking. See the data resources section below to find a relevant flood event.

Examining Maps

Distribute all maps and ask students to share what they are noticing about each map by writing observations in their journal. Ask students what maps would help them identify where they are. 

Topographic Map – Help students understand the topographic map using your hand or a willing student’s hand to draw topographic lines. By making a fist and then flattening your hand, you can demonstrate how each line on the maps represents different elevations on the land. 

Hybrid Imagery Map – Ask students to share what type of land uses they are seeing on this map. How is the park different from areas around the park? How is it different from their school and neighborhood? 

Landcover Map – Share with students that each color on the map represents a different type of landcover but there is a problem with this map, it does not have a legend. Ask students how they might create their own legend for this map. 

LiDAR Map – Explain to students that LiDAR is a technology that helps us map the surface of Earth. This map helps show us topography throughout the park

Land Survey Walk

In this section you will lead students on a walk you have planned. Ask the group to stop along the way to ask students to discuss and/or document the following:

• Describe the land here.
  • What landcover are we hiking through? Can we see other types of landcover around us? Ask students to compare what they are seeing to their maps. 
  • If it were raining right now where might raindrops accumulating here end up? (water could infiltrate into the ground, run-off across the land, or might be used by plants in the area). Use the LiDAR map and Topographic map for students to explain their thinking. 
  • What does the soil look like here? Take a few minutes to test water infiltration on an area (see below). 
  • What else are we observing in this location? If students find wildlife they want to observe, that is great! Take the time to stop and allow students to discuss all observations. 

Keep students in pairs, or for larger groups (more than 12) have students work in groups of 3 or 4.

Each group will need a piece of paper or cardstock and a blue marker. Instruct each group to:

1. Crumple their paper into a ball. 
2. Gently partly uncrumple their paper. Do not completely smooth the paper out. 
3. Tell students that their paper represents a landscape, to imagine they are looking down at this landscape as if they are a bird flying above it. Ask students to identify different landforms. If needed, introduce the terms: ridgeline and ravine. 
4. Instruct students to use their blue marker to trace all the ridgelines or the highest parts of their paper landscape. 
5. Tell the students that it is going to rain on their landscapes. Walk to each group and spray their landscape with your spray bottle so that the blue begins to run across the paper. Do not spray so much that the paper is soaked through and cannot hold its shape!
6. Ask students to make observations about how the water is running across the paper landscape. Use the following questions to discuss:
   1. Where is the water going? What types of waterways are you seeing begin to form?
   2. Is all the water ending up in the same place or is it going to separate places?
   3. Can you define areas where all the water is going to the same low point? These are your watersheds!
   4. Explain to students that this is a model of a watershed. We use models to better understand large systems that can be hard to see all at once. Ask students to think about how the model is like the land and water they explored, and how it is different (what are the limitations of the model?). 

Option 1: Create an “interpretive sign” for the park that explains to visitors what a watershed is and why it is important to protect.

Provide students with examples of local interpretive signs on other topics. Note them if you pass any while exploring your local park. 

Suggest that students might include:

• A diagrammatic model (drawn picture) of the watershed, identifying the name of the watershed if possible. 
• A description of the watershed:
  • What is the topography like? 
  • What streams, pond, lakes, or rivers are in the watershed?
  • What is the land cover made of in the watershed?
• Why do we need to protect this watershed? What can people do to help protect this watershed? 

Option 2: Design a solution to a real or hypothetical flood problem. Use observation from the land survey to identify a problem such as water pooling somewhere on the school grounds or go back to students’ models and identify a flood-prone area in their model.