Watershed Lab lesson plans
Each one is a class period with everything to run it: a teacher plan, a student worksheet, an exit ticket with answers, and the standards it meets. Students need no account, and a free class saves their work.
Watershed Lab: Where Does the Rain Go?
Students rain a real storm on a forest valley and watch the creeks swell. They read how much of the rain soaked in and how much ran off, find the watershed's edge, the divide, and follow one raindrop down to the creek mouth. A drop that lands a step outside the yellow line ends up in another watershed altogether.
FreeWatershed Lab: Forest or Parking Lot?
Students rain a storm on a forest valley and read the gauge. Then they paint a town and a parking lot where the forest was and rain the same storm again: far more runs off, and the creek rises higher. They change one thing at a time, the cover and then the soil, and explain each result with what the ground lets in.
FreeWatershed Lab: Find the Source
Something is wrong with the water at the beach: germs, algae, an oil sheen or mud. One place upstream is to blame. Students fill up to eight vials of creek water, read each on a test kit, and use one rule, water below a leak tests high and water above it tests clean, to work upstream to the source and name it.
FreeWatershed Lab: What Washes Into the Creek?
Students build a cornfield, a feedlot and a town on a forest valley and rain on it with the dye on: green fertilizer, brown manure, dark oil from streets and tan soil swirl into the creek, and storm drains carry the town's water straight to it. They read the creek mouth, then change the land, meadow or forest in place of part of the field, forest in place of a parking lot, and rain again to see what each change keeps out.