Alberta Grade Eight Science Unit E: Freshwater and Saltwater Systems (Social and Environmental Emphasis) 1: Describe the distribution and characteristics of water in local and global environments, and identify the significance of water supply and quality to the needs of humans and other living things
1. Put the students into groups of 3-5. 2. Provide the students with the "Do Your Patients Have Increased Rates of Cancer?" handout. 3. Have the students define the problem and determine what they know about the problem, what they need to learn more about, and where they need to look to find information. 4. Groups conduct research, find information, and work towards deciding what they should do. The teacher acts as a metacognitive coach, serving as a model.
John Snow Questions (Elementary) 1. How old was John Snow when he began to work as an apprentice for Dr. Hardcastle? 2. How many people died in the 1831-1832 cholera epidemic in England? 3. Doctors believes that ____ were the cause of cholera but Dr. Snow believed that _____ were the cause of cholera.
The students will investigate five common diseases that can be transmitted by water by becoming the experts on a particular disease. Each learning centre will have information to read and questions to answer. After learning about the disease, each group of students will present their information so that the whole class can learn about the disease.
A community gets its drinking water from a nearby lake. After many years, the company responsible for emptying the septic tanks in the community has shut down and a new company from out of town now empties the septic tanks. It would cost the company more money to haul the waste to their plant so the company has been dumping their trucks in a pit near the lake.
As the ball tournament begins to wind down, people begin to get sick. At first, three kids get sick and are taken to hospital. Then more and more people become ill. Over the next week, the number of sick people rises and includes almost everyone who was at the ball tournament and most of the community. There are no deaths but the final count of people who became sick is over 1000.
The city of New Orleans, Louisiana was one of the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The bustling city was flooded as the levees protecting the city failed. The flood waters filled the streets with almost every imaginable type of contamination. Fuel, chemical, and biological products combined to make what some people referred to as a “toxic soup”.
In March 2001, the solids contact unit in the surface water treatment plant was emptied and all the sludge removed from the bottom in order to inspect, clean and repair a crack that had formed in the cement floor. This type of repair should normally be done in February, so that the spring breakup and runoff will not affect the system.
