The author gratefully acknowledges NC Sea Grant and NC Water Resources Research Institute for funding two research projects on water quality in the Cape Fear River that inspired creation of this lesson plan.

Lesson Plan Template

Author(s): Nathan HallAuthor Affiliation and Location: (e.g. Duke, Beaufort, NC)

UNC Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences, Morehead City, NC

Optional Author Contact Information (e.g. email)

nshall@email.unc.edu(252) 726-6841 ext. 228

Summary of Lesson Plan (max. 100 Words)Include aspects of the lesson that are unique and innovative.

Scummy green waters: stagnant back yard ponds to large flowing riversThis lesson will introduce 3-5th graders to the life of phytoplankton in ponds/lakes and flowing river environments. Through 1) a fertilization experiment, 2) a hands-on physical model of bloom development, 3) graphing exercises, and 4) an internet search, the students will learn how rapidly harmful phytoplankton blooms can develop through cell division, the effects of over fertilization, and the influence of river flow on bloom dynamics.

List of Standards AddressedCommon Core, NC Essential Science, Next Gen, etc. (This should be list of all full standards addressed by the lesson)

NC Essential Standard 3.P.1.2. Compare the relative speeds (faster or slower) of objects that travel the same distance in different amounts of time.

NC Essential Standard 3.E.2.1 Compare Earth’s saltwater and freshwater features (including oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, and glaciers).

NC Essential Standard 3.L.2.2 Explain how environmental conditions determine how well plants survive and grow.

NC Essential Standard 4.L1.3 Explain how humans can adapt their behavior to live in changing habitats (e.g., recycling wastes, establishing rain gardens, planting trees and shrubs to prevent flooding and erosion).

NC Essential Standard 5.P.1.3 Illustrate the motion of an object using a graph to show a change in position over a period of time.

NC Essential Standard 5.L.2.1 Compare the characteristics of several common ecosystems, including estuaries and salt marshes, oceans, lakes and ponds, forests, and grasslands.

NC Essential Standard 5.L.2.2 Classify the organisms within an ecosystem according to the function they serve: producers, consumers, or decomposers (biotic factors).

Common Core. 3.0 A-3. Use multiplication and division within 100 to solve word problems in situations involving equal groups, arrays, and measurement quantities, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

Common Core 4.0A-1Interpret a multiplication equation as a comparison, e.g., interpret 35 = 5 × 7 as a statement that 35 is 5 times as many as 7 and 7 times as

many as 5. Represent verbal statements of multiplicative comparisons as multiplication equations.

Common Core 4.0A-1-2 Multiply or divide to solve word problems involving multiplicative comparison, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem, distinguishing multiplicative comparison from additive comparison.

Common Core 5.0A- 3. Generate two numerical patterns using two given rules. Identify apparent relationships between corresponding terms. Form ordered pairs consisting of corresponding terms from the two patterns, and graph the ordered pairs on a coordinate plane.

Common Core 5.0G-1Use a pair of perpendicular number lines, called axes, to define a coordinate system, with the intersection of the lines (the origin) arranged to coincide with the 0 on each line and a given point in the plane located by using an ordered pair of numbers, called its coordinates. Understand that the first number indicates how far to travel from the origin in the direction of one axis, and the second number indicates how far to travel in the direction of the second axis, with the convention that the names of the two axes and the coordinates correspond (e.g., x-axis and x-coordinate, y-axis and y-coordinate).

Common Core 5.0G- 2. Represent real world and mathematical problems by graphing points in the first quadrant of the coordinate plane, and interpret coordinate values of points in the context of the situation.

Next Generation Science 3-LS1-1. Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.

Learning Objectives using Measurable Verbs (what students will be able to do)

List the growth requirements of all plants from huge trees to tiny microscopic phytoplankton Compare the methods of reproduction of land plants and phytoplankton Compare lakes and riversExamine how human nutrient inputs lead to phytoplankton bloomsTest how river flow can affect the amount of time that phytoplankton have to grow and form a bloomConstruct a graph of phytoplankton cell number versus time in an x,y coordinate planeEstimate how many cells could grow in a parcel of river water before the water reaches a drinking water intake Evaluate nutrient input reductions and river flow enhancement as management strategies to prevent blooms

Appropriate Grade Levels 3-5Group Size/# of students activities are designed for

20-30

Setting (e.g. indoors, outdoors, lab, etc.)

Indoors or outdoors

Approximate Time of Lesson (Break down into 20-50 minute periods)

One 15 minute period.One 50 minute period.

Resources Needed for Students Materials: Will be organized as a kit that will be mailed upon request.

Kit includes two 2 liter drink bottles, several fertilizer pellets. 30 pieces of string to outline a pond for each student and 30 small bean filled jars that represent varying levels of nutrient inputs from different point source or land use types.Students will need pencils for graphing and access to the internet.

Resources Needed for Educators Paper for printing student worksheets. Large flat surface for students to sit in a line.

Apps/Websites Needed Ability to perform an internet search

Lesson Activity (step by step description of activity)

Engage activity. 15 minutes. Should be started one week prior to the lesson plan. Collect surface water into two identical clear, 2-liter soda bottles. This could come from any surface water body but will probably work best if it is not flowing water. Ask the students if they see anything in the water. What do they think is in the water? Add a single pellet of 10-10-10 NPK fertilizer (or similar nitrogen and phosphorus containing commercial fertilizer) to one bottle. No explanations. Just say, let’s see what happens. Place the bottles in a warm, well-lit area in the classroom. Natural lighting from a window would be ideal. In interior class rooms with no windows, a grow light will likely be necessary. Have the students briefly observe and stir each bottle daily for the week prior to the lesson. If noticeable changes in water color haven’t occurred in the bottle with fertilizer added by the third to fourth day, increase the amount of light temperature and/or temperature for the bottles.Vocabulary: Phytoplankton (phyto=plant, plankton=drifter): microscopic algae that are usually single-celled and drift freely in the waterBloom: an unusually high, and often harmful amount of phytoplankton in a water bodyNutrient: minerals required by plants for growth, nitrogen and phosphorus are two that often stimulate phytoplankton growth when added to water

Explore:By the day of the lesson plan, the bottle with the fertilizer pellet added should be noticeably greener, browner, or redder than the bottle with no fertilizer added. Several probing starter questions could be used to help students relate the bottle experiment to natural environments they are familiar with:

1) Have you ever seen water that green? Where was it? 2) If the bottles were lakes or rivers, which would you want to drink from or

swim Another leading question begins the process of defining what phytoplankton are and that like other plants they require: water, nutrients, light, and time to grow.

3) What do you think caused the water to change color over time?

Exploration Activity: Materials will be organized as a kit that will be mailed upon request. Kit includes 30 pieces of string to outline a pond for each student and 30 small bean filled jars that represent varying levels of nutrient inputs from different point source or land use types.

1) Golf course 2) lawn 3) waste water treatment plant 4) farm field 5) forest 6) wetland

Beans will represent inputs of water and nutrients from the different source types and the amount of phytoplankton in each pond. “Nutrient” beans are painted red on one side (while they are still an available nutrient) and are flipped over to the green side to represent uptake of the nutrient and growth of the

phytoplankton. Growth in the pond: Have the students sit in a line, and use the string to form a circle on the floor that will represent their pond. Have each student empty their container of beans on the floor and turn all but one of the green beans over to their red side. Instruct the students that day 1 of growth in their pond has just begun and that each phytoplankton cell should divide. Turning the lights off and on may be a fun way to indicate that a new day has started. They double the number of green beans in their pond by two by flipping over the appropriate number of red “nutrient” beans. Population numbers for each day should be graphed with time on the x-axis and cell numbers on the y-axis. Repeat this process for five days. During this process, some of the students may indicate that they have run out of “nutrient” beans and cannot undergo another round of cell doubling. This will be an opportunity for the students to compare amongst their ponds how different sources and land uses vary in their nutrient loads to nearby waters. After five days have passed, ask the students to calculate and graph the predicted population after the sixth day assuming that there were plenty of nutrients. What does the shape of the curve on the graph look like?

Growth in the river: Have the students exchange their “nutrient source” with another student’s. Next, instruct the students to unloop their strings and place them end to end with their neighbors to form 2 sets of parallel lines. Instead of a pond, the strings will now represent the banks of a river. Indicate to the students that one end of the parallel lines is the ocean. As before, have the students flip all green beans but one to the nutrient side. As in the pond, red beans will be flipped to the green side to represent doubling of phytoplankton cells. Moving water: After each doubling event instruct the students to move their pile of beans three string lengths downstream toward the ocean. Each string length represents 5 miles. Population numbers for each day should be graphed with distance on the x-axis and cell numbers on the y-axis. Each day some of the students’ phytoplankton and nutrients will be swept to sea. These students should put their beans back in their jar and help another student. Repeat this process for five days. After five days have the students answer these questions

Explain: The teacher should lead a discussion to help the students answer the following questions on their worksheets.

1) How does growth of a phytoplankton differ from a land plant?2) How are their requirements for growth similar or different?3) What determined how many phytoplankton cells grew in the pond and in

the river?4) What would happen if more or less nutrients were added?5) What would happen if the river moved faster or slower?6) Phytoplankton grow very slowly in cold water and generally the river

flows much faster during winter. Would you expect phytoplankton blooms to more or less common during the winter or summer?

7) Instruct the students to assume that 20 phytoplankton cells results in potentially-toxic, undrinkable water. Based on the students’ graphs of cell numbers against distance, determine where along the river would be a good place to have a drinking water treatment plant located.

Elaborate: The Cape Fear River is North Carolina’s largest river system and in the past decade has been having summertime phytoplankton blooms. On the

students’ worksheet is a graph of real summertime water flow speeds in the Cape Fear River. Based on the students’ understanding of how river flow affects bloom development, have the students circle years of the graphs where they think blooms may have developed.

Next, have the students’ do an internet search for algal blooms along the Cape Fear River. Find the dates of reported phytoplankton blooms in newspapers, TV news casts, and public advisories to determine whether the students’ predictions were true. Searches should include “Cape Fear River” and the students can try “algae”, “algae bloom”, “bloom”, “harmful algae bloom”. Using years (e.g. “2014” is also useful in figuring out which years blooms occurred.

Evaluate: At the bottom of each students’ graphing worksheet, have the students write a brief letter to our governor to explain why we should reduce phytoplankton blooms in our waters, and what management strategies might be implemented.

Final Product/Assessment (e.g. worksheet, presentation, poster, etc.)

The students’ completed worksheet will serve as an assessment tool.

Appendix 1. Images of phytoplankton blooms.

Appendix 2. Student worksheet.

Appendix 3. Teacher evaluation form.

Background Reading for Teachers:

http://www.sjrwmd.com/algae/

http://www.cees.iupui.edu/research/algal-toxicology/bloomfactors

https://arrc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/River%20flows%20and%20blue-green%20algae.pdf

Appendix 1. Images of phytoplankton blooms and the problems they cause

Phytoplankton bloom on the Cape Fear River

Phytoplankton bloom on Lake Taihu, China

Satellite picture of a bloom on Lake ErieLake Taihu bloom caused smelly drinking water for about 2 million people

Fish kill during bloom on Lake Erie

Appendix 2. Student’s Worksheet

1) How does reproduction of a phytoplankton differ from a land plant?

2) How are their requirements for growth similar or different?

3) What determined how many phytoplankton cells grew in the pond and in the river?

4) Would you expect more or less phytoplankton if more nutrients are added to a pond or river. Why?

5) In a river, would you expect more phytoplankton when the river is moving fast or slow? Why?

6) Phytoplankton grow very slowly in cold water and generally the river flows much faster during winter. Would you expect phytoplankton blooms to more or less common during the winter or summer? Why?

7) Instruct the students to assume that 20 phytoplankton cells results in potentially-toxic, undrinkable water. Based on the students’ graphs of cell numbers against distance, determine where along the river would be a good place to have a drinking water treatment plant located.

Based on your understanding of the factors that lead to phytoplankton blooms, circle the years you think blooms were most likely to occur. Use the internet to research media reports of phytoplankton blooms and see if your prediction was correct.

Write a brief letter to North Carolina’s governor stating why phytoplankton blooms are a problem in North Carolina lakes, ponds, and rivers and what are some ways that the government and citizens of North Carolina can help prevent them.

Dear Governor Cooper,

Sincerely,

Superstar Student X

Appendix 3. Teacher Evaluation of Lesson Plan

Please rate this lesson plan: Poor Average Excellent (please check one box)

1. What portions of this lesson plan went well? What portions were challenging?

2. How can this lesson plan be improved in the future?

3. Will you use this lesson plan again?

Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Please return this form by email to: Nathan Hall <nshall@email.unc.edu>

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