Big Idea
Land and Water Exist in a delicate balancing act impacted by both natural forces and humans choices and actions. It’s complicated!
Summary
People and nature are interdependent. Our choices and actions have intended and unintended consequences on the health of the natural systems upon which all living things depend.
Engage
With your students, first list all the ways we use our land to live, work and play and then categorize them as residential, commercial, industrial , agricultural.
Explore and Explain
For this next activity, small groups of students will be given a parcel of land, represented by a section of mural paper (prep instruction to follow) Each group will be tasked with developing their parcel for humans to live, work and play. The only thing existing on this land you distribute will be pre-drawn waterways,
Preparation instructions:
Get a long roll of white paper and cut a mural size piece to begin.. You will make a fictional area of land that has no people yet– just a river and a few small branches or tributaries. Draw one large river on the entire mural with thickness using two lines. You can also make a few branches or tributaries that flow into the river. Make sure you add a few arrows to show the direction of the flow. Cut this mural paper into sections now, depending on how many students are in the class and how many you want to work around one piece.
Pre-cut the construction paper into 1 inch squares using red, green and purple sheets.
Red = residential
Purple is industrial and commercial
Green is open space
Don’t let the students know that their rivers are really all connected! They will only find out that they are connected at the end of the activity…when they learn that we all live upstream or downstream of someone.
A discussion guide for you to use throughout this learning experience may be found here and in the Materials link on the right menu.
Student Land Use Planning Guide: Teacher Discussion Prompts
Ask students to first discuss how they will plan their town. They can place their squares near or away from the river , in clusters, or stack them.
Mid-way through the group planning, ask students to take a pause and to consider the following two questions:
In your planning, before you decide where to place your squares, have you discussed with your “community members” what they might want and need in your community? Consider if they are the same things?
How will the people in your community relate to the waterways?
Once they are set on their plan, glue them down.
As a class, each group will share what they did and why
Discuss the balance of land and water .
Ask your students:
Did you discuss the placement of your houses, shops and factories related to the waterways? Why or why not?
Did you consider water as a way to provide energy? Recreation? Drinking water?
Once each group has had a chance to discuss their plan, now find a place in the classroom that you can connect the river end to end to make one long river.
Point out the direction of the flow and what it means to be upstream or downstream of someone else.
Ask students
What is the impact of your own choices on the neighbors on either side ?
Would you change anything ?
Why?
What if your “upstream” neighbor is a polluter?
How do our individual (group) choices impact the other individuals (groups)?
If you have time, introduce the concept of reciprocity (a mutual or shared relationship with nature) Did they plan with that in mind? Why or Why not?
Teacher Support
Guiding Questions
How did the choices people made regarding how land was developed impact our waterways?
What were the intended and unintended consequences of the actions of land development?
Students will be able to:
To create a model to describe how the development of land impacted many of Philadelphia’s original waterways and describe the effects, both positive and negative, on the environment
Long roll of white butcher paper cut into 2 ft sections, one for each student group
Small 1″ squares of red, green, and purple paper or sticky notes to use in planning land use (tape if not using sticky notes to stick squares to butcher paper)
Student Land Use Planning Guide — Teacher Discussion prompts
Impact (verb): have a strong effect or influence on someone or something
Development (noun) : managing the physical and social growth of an urban area
Residential (noun) : where people live
Industrial and commercial (noun) : factories and businesses
Open Space (noun): Green parks, lawns, spaces that are not developed
Reciprocity (noun) : the practice of exchanging things with others that are mutually beneficial
Using model created to cite evidence of the consequences and impact of development decisions.
PA STEELS
3.4 Environmental Literacy and Sustainability
Environment and Society 3.4.3-5.B Make a claim about the environmental and social impacts of design solutions and civic actions, including their own actions.