Guest Post: Meadowlawn Middle School AVID 8th Grade Students Research UN Sustainability Goals to Help Solve Local Water Issues
By Amy Putkonen and Dana Kollman
Meadowlawn Middle School and Tampa Bay Watch teamed up to teach local 8th grade students about the UN Sustainability Goals to coincide with the UN Water Conference which took place in New York City this March. The two-week unit began when Media Specialist Amy Putkonen and Dana Kollman collaborated to teach Ms. Kollman’s 8th-grade AVID students about the United Nation's Sustainability Key Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. AVID is an elective class that closes the achievement gap by using writing, inquiry collaboration, organization, and reading skills. The focus of the unit was to help students write about what they learned in researching local water issues.
To prepare for teaching this unit, Ms. Putkonen and Ms. Kollman visited the Tampa Bay Watch facility at St. Pete Pier to interview Zoe Caraffi about water issues in the Tampa Bay area. This interview was then used in a series of lessons to help students to research water-related problems in our area.
The unit focused on students taking Cornell notes and organizing their findings after watching the interview with Zoe Caraffi. They read water pollution articles to learn what other people are doing about the problems, and what they could do to help out locally. The students took notes on the articles, then were asked to create an e-book in Book Creator. The students were very engaged and applied their knowledge in a creative outlet. They were allowed to collaborate during their research to share ideas. Students were then asked to reflect if this knowledge helped them to feel more empowered to do something about the local water issues.
Ms. Caraffi followed up with a visit using Tampa Bay Watch’s mobile lab to explain the importance and balance of plankton in the water environment. Students are learning that they can make a difference by making small changes in their everyday lives, and that even our youth can be engaged in helping the world to solve big problems.
Students’ samples below:
