Education: Classroom Activity

Stream Team Stewards

Grade level: 3–5

Thanks to a grant from the Unified Port of San Diego, the San Diego Zoo’s Education Department developed a curriculum to help you teach the importance of San Diego’s watersheds.

Teacher overview

This curriculum teaches elementary school students about the watershed we all live in here in San Diego and how we can continue to keep it healthy through our own actions. Included in the curriculum are interactive learning challenges and environmentally friendly tips.

Summary: Our curriculum leads you through discovery lessons that teach about animals living in their watershed and human threats to their watershed, such as pollution and litter. Action is the theme, and we offer several ways for classrooms to help the future of our local watersheds. Even young students can make a difference in the life of a sea turtle by taking a waste-free lunch to school each day.

Subjects: Reading, science, and art.

Skills: Students will use inquiry prediction and teamwork to determine what some aquatic animals eat and where they fit in the food chain. Students will discover the impact plastics have on animals, and identify ways they can change their habits to promote a healthier environment and share several environmentally friendly tips with their families to practice at home.

Learning objectives: Students should be able to define their watershed, explain how they can conserve their watershed and its wildlife, and state how pollution affects their watershed, and list at least three action steps they can take to help their watershed.

Teacher background

A watershed is the area that drains to a common waterway, such as a stream, lake, estuary, wetland, or even the ocean. Everyone lives in a watershed system.

Attachments*

Educator Curriculum
Community Brochure

* You can download the entire file. When you prepare to print, first review the file to see what individual lessons you want—that could save you paper!