Deadly Water

Students studied the impacts that chemical pollution is having or will have on the Great Lakes, groundwater, Lake Michigan, Grand Traverse Bay, and Kids Creek. Students also studied the impact prescription drugs are having on the Great Lakes on a particle level, or how household products are infiltrating groundwater on a particle level.
To exhibit what they learned, in teams, students created a variety of marketing campaign approaches such as websites, flyers, brochures, t-shirts, and social media postings to educate the public on the various pollutants that impact our water.

Science: Develop an understanding of the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures. Describe how the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction and thus mass is conserved. Finally, students will also gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society.

ELA: Students will write and produce a marketing plan to advocate on behalf of the environment and our drinking water supply. They will use persuasive and informative writing techniques to accomplish this. In addition, students will use research techniques to gather information from relevant sources.

Math: Students will learn about the slopes of lines by measuring volumes and masses of different water samples and calculating their densities. They will use slopes of lines to explore equivalent fractions, and they will learn the effect that the properties of a line have on its equation. They will also learn to use scientific notation to compare extremely large and extremely small numbers by exploring a shark’s sense of smell.