9th Grade – 12th Grade
Lesson Plans
Harmful Algal Blooms (Science)
Description: In this lesson, students will learn about harmful algal blooms, what causes them and how climate change contributes to these blooms. Students will be expected to conduct a case study where they investigate how harmful algal blooms have affected areas around the United States, and learn how environmental conditions and climate change negatively impact the water systems. After the case study is complete, students will be expected to share their results with other classmates, exchanging commonalities between different areas that experience HABs.While this lesson emphasizes the effects of climate change on other water systems, it is important for students to understand that harmful algal blooms are a problem faced locally by the communities in our watershed. Teachers are encouraged to hold a conversation about how HABs affect their community. At the end of this lesson, teachers should work with the students to brainstorm ideas on how to mitigate climate change and protect Cayuga Lake.
Plant's - Nature's Filters (Science)
Description: In this lesson, students will complete a lab that demonstrates the ability of plants to help remove pollutants from water. In this activity, students will use celery to show the water purification process. After conducting the experiment on the celery, students will be expected to have a class discussion on how plants can be used to help minimize the amount of pollution that runs into our waterways. Teachers should emphasize the effect of pollutants on water systems, and the local effects that runoff into lakes can have. Teachers are encouraged to ask questions like: How do we value nature and plants as a society? What power do plants have in protecting Cayuga Lake? How do pollutants affect the aquatic ecosystem? How do pollutants affect HABs and their ability to grow? Teachers should help students brainstorm ways in which they can protect plants in their community, and emphasize the importance of respecting and protecting land in order to protect Cayuga Lake. This lesson plan will help students form relationships with the environment and allow them to reflect on the historical ways in which society views nature.
Inventing a Better World (English)
Description: In this lesson, students will create a product to help solve a local environmental problem. Students will start by learning about inventions/products that other youth have made to create social change. Students will then be expected to research environmental leaders who have been creating change around the world, and certain environmental related issues that are faced in our watershed or New York State. After doing research and learning about a problem, students will have to create a product or find a solution to the problem they are trying to solve. Students will work in small groups and divide tasks so every student is participating equally. Students will either have to provide a sketch or explanation of the product and present their invention to the class. It is encouraged that teachers hold a conversation on how creating these environmental solutions may be possible, and how community action could create change strong enough to lessen the effects of the climate crisis. Teachers should emphasize the importance of working together and empower students to find their own place as stewards of the environment.
From Problem to Public Policy: Group Policy Design and Policy Making (Social Studies)
Description: This lesson plan will help to teach students about environmental legislation and emphasize the importance of passing environmental legislation that benefits communities. Students will start by watching a Schoolhouse Rock! video on how the legislature is passed. Students will then be put into groups and brainstorm environmental-related issues that they see within their community or on the state level. Students will then research environmental policy that could potentially solve their issue, and create a method of evaluation to scale how well the legislature solves the environmental issue. Students will then be expected to create a speech about the legislation and why it should be passed. After the groups have presented their speech to the class, teachers should create a reflection that emphasizes why it is important to have policies that protect watersheds and the environment. Teachers can talk about current environmental progress that is being made in our region or NYS, and have the students reflect on whether that policy helps all communities or just some.
Books
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer
Description:As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.
Sacred Instructions: Indigneous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change By Sherri Mitchell
Description: Drawing from ancestral knowledge, as well as her experience as an attorney and activist, Sherri Mitchell addresses some of the most crucial issues of our say, such as environmental protection and human rights. For those seeking change, this book offers a set of cultural values that will preserve our collective survival for future generations.
What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City By Mona Hanna-Attisha
Description: Here is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water—and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don’t See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself—an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family’s activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice.
Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors By Carolyn Finney
Description: Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? In this thought-provoking study, Carolyn Finney looks beyond the discourse of the environmental justice movement to examine how the natural environment has been understood, commodified, and represented by both white and black Americans. Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the “great outdoors” and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces.
Drawing on a variety of sources from film, literature, and popular culture, and analyzing different historical moments, including the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Finney reveals the perceived and real ways in which nature and the environment are racialized in America. Looking toward the future, she also highlights the work of African Americans who are opening doors to greater participation in environmental and conservation concerns.