Conduct
this session in the classroom.
- Display
a Web browser on a large monitor or using a projection device, go
to the EPA’s Surf
Your Watershed Web
site, and click “Search by Map.” In the U.S. map, click
Virginia. Then click your area of Virginia to find your local watershed.
- Direct
students to rejoin their map groups. Each group will need a Virginia
map, an enlarged local topographic map from the Virginia Atlas
and Gazetteer that includes your school, and a highlighter.
- Instruct
the students to find the school on the local topographic map and
to draw an arrow showing the direction the class determined water
would leave the schoolyard.
- Instruct
the students to find the stream nearest the point at which water
leaves the schoolyard, then highlight the path from that stream to
the stream or river into which it flows. (Topographic elevation lines
are labeled in the Virginia Atlas and Gazetteer in light
gray, and the water will flow from the higher elevation to the lower
one. An
alternative method is to find the larger tributary you know your
area drains into and work backwards.)
Students should continue to follow the water and highlight its path through
all tributaries until it reaches the Bay.
- As
a class, review the water’s path, listing the directions on the
board as you go. This list of bodies of water between the schoolyard
and the Bay provides the school’s watershed address. Make sure
to include in the address details the students noticed in the schoolyard,
such as parking lots, sandboxes, athletic fields, gutters, and storm
drains.
- Follow
the path of water from the schoolyard to the Bay, affixing a piece
of string along its course on the large class wall map of Virginia.
Have students help hold the string so that it follows the winding
path of the streams and rivers as closely as possible. Cut the string
when it reaches the Bay. Next lay the string straight on a table
and measure it. Then use the map scale to convert the distance to
kilometers or miles. This is the distance a raindrop travels from
the schoolyard to the Chesapeake Bay.
- Finally,
have each student pretend he or she is a raindrop writing directions
to another raindrop on how to get from the schoolyard to the Bay.
Instruct students to include the elements of the school’s watershed
address as well as the distance from the schoolyard to the Bay. Encourage
them to include things to look for along the trip, such as ground
surfaces, land formations, and state parks.
Next: Classroom Assessment Suggestions
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