Microteaching Strategy: RPG Topic: Water

1. MicroteachingStrategy: RPGTopic: Water Whitney Greene, Jonathon Holt, Justin Biggs & Kristin Thomas

2. Goals For Students: • Established Goals: • This lesson presents an overview of how water is an essential resource for life. Since water is the fundamental building block of life, students will analyze the different ways they use water, what measures they could take in order to conserve it and the problems that could arise when clean water is lacking in communities.

3. Standards • Essential Standard: 8.E.1 – Understand the hydrosphere and the impact of humans on local systems and the effects of the hydrosphere on humans. • Clarifying Objectives: 8.E.1.1 – Explain the structure of the hydrosphere including: water distribution on earth & local river basins and water availability

4. Standards: • 8.E.1.4 Conclude that the good health of humans requires: • Monitoring of the hydrosphere • Water quality standards • Methods of water treatment • Maintaining safe water quality • Stewardship

5. Students will know: • The importance of water   • The different ways people use water everyday in their lives  • The names of humanitarian organizations that assist communities with unsanitary water conditions • How to get involved in helping communities that lack clean water

6. Students will be able to: • Identify ways they use water • Examine the dire consequences when communities lack clean water and sanitation • Develop a plan of action in their lives and communities to conserve water

7. Overview & Background • The world’s water crisis has many faces. A girl in Africa walks three miles before school to fetch water from a distant well. A teenage boy in China is afflicted with terrible skin lesions because his village well is contaminated with arsenic. Impoverished slum dwellers in Angola draw drinking water from the local river where their sewage is dumped. Farmers on the lower reaches of the Colorado River struggle because water has been diverted to cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

8. Overview & Background • According to the United Nations, every day 4,500 children under the age of 5 die around the world, having fallen sick because of unclean water and sanitation. • Five times as many children die each year of diarrhea as of HIV/AIDS. • A third of the world’s population is enduring some form of water scarcity. • One in every six human beings has no access to clean water within a kilometer of their homes. • Half of all people in developing countries have no access to proper sanitation. • Water is critical for life and for livelihoods. • Billions of people suffer from disease, poverty and a lack of dignity and opportunity because they have no access to this basic resource.

9. Activity 1: The Hook • Get into groups of 2 and answer the following questions on a piece of paper. • Why is water important? • Is it a need or a want? • Where does your water come from? • Who owns water?

10. The Hook: Continued • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGd9D4J0lag • Documentary: FLOW

11. Local Problems: Flooding in Boone

12. Local Problems: Flooding in Boone • Floodplains are low-lying areas that are adjacent to rivers or streams. Boone has many streams that move through town and the entire town is in a floodplain. The lay of the land around Boone also makes a sort of bowl shape with higher elevations nearly completely surrounding the area. To the north you have Rich Mountain and Howards Knob, to the west Beech Mountain and Grandfather Mountain, so much of the rain and runoff goes through Boone. The steep terrain causes fast runoff, with little soil to soak up the rain much of it ends up in the streams. This lack of soil in the mountains leads to a shallow water table.

13. Local Problems: Flooding in Boone • The water table is basically the depth of the unsaturated area of soil, the reason that the water table is so shallow in the mountains is because there is simply not much soil on top of the solid rock, and as we know rock doesn’t soak up much water. The recent re-routing of the stream that runs through campus was to help to try and prevent some of the flood problems that occur on campus. Most of us know that after any descent rain the mall parking lot, the State Farm Baseball fields, and the Boone Country Club all see flooding occur.

14. NC Big Sweep • October 6, 2012 • Statewide date for litter clean up • It’s a nonprofit organization that coordinates a day for North Carolinians to come together and clean up rivers, streams, fields, etc. of litter

15. Where do we go from here? • Brainstorming ideas to make a difference

16. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle • Reduce-limit the amount of trash and resources that you use on a daily basis • Reuse- find ways to use items more than once; reuse water bottles and glass jars when possible • Recycle- don’t throw it away if it can be recycled also buy and use materialsthat have been recycled

17. School Recycling Program • What are we going to do?

18. Discussion of Strategy: RPG • In The Aims of Education (1929), A.N. Whitehead described three stages of learning that consisted of clear goals that must be accomplished in order to grasp a concept and move further through the stages. The three stages of learning are as follows: • 1. Romance: This stage can be described as "the hook" of a lesson. In this stage, the learners must successfully be romanced by the material and develop a true desire to learn more. • 2. Precision: The second stage is the one in which the actual content is delivered to the learner in an engaging and relevant fashion.  • 3.Generalization: Lastly, this is the stage in which everything is applied. The romance of the material as well as the content are tied together and then made to be thought about or interpreted. An assessment of some sort is usually included in this final stage.