What this unit is about…
Migration explores the routes, distances, and purposes for wildlife migration with a special focus on Pacific salmon. This iconic species of the Pacific Northwest has shaped life in Salish Sea watersheds since they first entered rivers and creeks to spawn, bringing their ocean-derived nutrients in reach of land animals, plants, and people. Nearly 1/4 of the nitrogen in the leaves of our giant temperate rainforest trees once swam in the sea as salmon. They are the reason for the great natural wealth of the Salish Sea and beyond.
Learning to identify habitat needs based on their specific migrations will empower students to identify ways they can improve salmon habitat near their own schools and possibly design and carry out a salmon habitat improvement project. Reach out to salmon experts in your community for support with this unit and project, from protecting storm drains to raising salmon in the classroom. Share your salmon project story along the way. Your school may just be featured as our next Salish Sea Heroes!
Photo courtesy of Brandon Cole
Next Generation Science Standards in this unit:
5-LS2-1 Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
3-5-ETS1-2 Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
MS-ESS2-1 Develop a model to describe the cycling of Earth’s materials and the flow of energy that drives this process.
MS-LS2-1 Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
MS-LS2-4 Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
The Sequence
After you have registered for the curriculum, preparing the unit is as easy as 1, 2, 3!
Review the unit plan, and customize it to suit your needs
This unit plan is flexible, adaptable, and in Word format to ensure that your experience can be tailored geographically to your local watershed and community, and to your particular teaching objectives and needs. Use the plan like a map- it has directions, resources, learning targets and performance expectations, and more to guide every step of the way, but the adventure you and your students share is your own.
Review and customize the slideshow
This slideshow presents helpful background information, including links to online resources and videos. With helpful presenter notes, it also acts as a guide as you progress. As with the unit plan, you may want to customize certain slides to make them even more relevant and local. For this reason, it is in PowerPoint. Save a copy and make the change you see fit.
Review, customize, and print the accompanying student journal
This editable Word document is your students’ place to wonder, record observations, take notes, diagram, and plan and record scientific investigation or engineering processes. It is also a place to celebrate hard work with well-deserved stamps on the back page. Review and customize the journal to reflect the changes you’ve made in your unit plan and slideshow.
HOW TO PRINT
In Microsoft Word, click on the Layout menu, then the arrow to expand the Page Set Up options. Click Margins and select “Book Fold” in the drop down menu by Multiple pages. Print in landscape orientation on 8.5 x 14” (legal) paper with two staples along the center fold. Note: the font is Helvetica. Changing the font can change alignment of journal pages.
Utilize the materials below for additional student resources throughout the unit.
Additional Resources & Materials
Assessments
Every unit has its own pre- and post-assessments for tracking the progress and growth that students make throughout the curriculum. Links to these (and additional formative assessments!) are also provided in the unit plan.
MIGRATION POST-ASSESSMENT
MIGRATION PRE-ASSESSMENT
WONDER
Give your students a visual or sensory experience that provides a chance to wonder about their natural surroundings. This may be a hands-on outdoor activity, an observational field trip, an in-classroom presentation, a still photo, or a video to invoke curiosity about a phenomenon students can’t wait to try to solve. During this Migration unit, students explore the phenomenon of dying coho salmon in watersheds surrounding the Salish Sea. This will spark wonder about whether or not students’ local streams are safe for salmon.
Essential question
After the experience of “wonder” from the video above, it is time to give the Migration Student Journal to each student. Here is a time to write thoughts, ideas, and questions into their journals inspired by their reading of Explore the Salish Sea Chapter 7, Epic Journeys. After students have wondered about the phenomenon that sets the stage for exploring salmon migration, invite an open discussion with the class. Develop an essential question around the mystery or problem they’d like to solve, guiding them to frame it around determining if a local stream is healthy for salmon.
Background research
Once you have established an essential question, the information-gathering begins...or continues! The Explore the Salish Sea book is a great place to start, there are some additional resources in the link below, and you may find many more of your own. Of course, you’ll come back to this step throughout the process, as your questions and claims will require support.
Develop a Testable Question
This is when your students take that larger essential question and distill it down into specific, testable question. The most direct questions begin with, “Is, Are, Do, Does, or Will…”
put science to work
Identify variables, design a procedure, carry out an investigation, analyze data, and see where active discovery leads. Will there be answers? Solutions? More questions to test? It may even be back to the drawing board to start all over again. The scientific process is never linear (and it never ends), but there is always an adventure! The resources in The Real Process of Science website explain the whole deal, and the How Science Works interactive diagram is a tool your students can use to track their own process. Pretty slick!
communicate your findings
This is a crucial part of the scientific process! It is the part where the results of all your hard work can make a difference. This may be a difference in the choices a few citizens make each day to help the sea or a new bill on the Senate floor that changes the way our whole state helps the whales. Click on the button above to return to the Real Process of Science website’s online tool for students to build the story of their scientific process.
Photo courtesy of Brandon Cole
Click the button below to go to the Box folder of all the documents for this unit in one place.
Ideas for improvement? Share ideas and resources with our Education Coordinator, Mira, at mdlutz@ucdavis.edu.