Sustainability Camp Curriculum

DEAD ANIMALS IN YOUR CAR?

Time:    2 hrs (partial block; ideally paired with Something for Everyone)
Place:   Tofino Botanical Gardens, on the mudflats - outdoors

Overview

This block is focused on distinguishing between, and understanding the importance and appropriate use of renewable and non-renewable resources – all natural elements that are shared by the commons.

Students will visit the Tofino Botanical Gardens’ mudflats. The mudflats will be used as a visual stimulator for primordial swamps to help students imagine the long, slow process of creating coal, oil and natural gas from ancient organisms. The process of creating fossil fuels will be explained through an energy story. During their visit to the mudflats students will be able to explore and discover the ecosystem and organisms that live there. Students will collect some mudflat organisms that can be viewed on the dissecting scope in The Ecolodge classroom.

Prescribed Learning Outcomes

• Grade 7 Science: Assess the requirements for sustaining healthy local ecosystems; Evaluate human impacts on local ecosystems.
• Grade 6 and 7 Physical Education: Participate safely in activities in a natural or alternative setting; an outdoor experience; Follow rules, routines and procedures of safety in a variety of activities; Select and assume responsibility for assigned roles while participating in a physical activity.
• Grade 6 and 7 Social Studies: Identify and clarify a problem, issue or inquiry.

Objectives

• Students will be able to distinguish between renewable and non-renewable resources, and understand that oil, natural gas and coal were formed over millions of years from organic debris.
• Students will understand the concept of “carrying capacity”, and that natural resources are limited.
• Students will understand how to appropriately behave in the interest of common resources.
• Students will understand that the automobile fuel that their parents’ use is refined from a fossil fuel, and will be able to explain some of the implications of using fossil fuels at the current rates we are.

Materials

• students wear their rubber boots!
• Buckets
• shovels
• magnifying glasses
• digital display dissecting scope and projection screen, petri dishes,  (classroom

Procedure

1. Gather students and explain that we are going down to the mudflats. Include any preamble about the mudflats. Note any safety issues, and requests for behaviour. Tell students we are going to walk down to the mudflats – ask one person to lead and one person to sweep.
2. Walk down to mudflats. (15min)
3. Allow students some time (~5min) to get acquainted with the mudflats, then ask them to gather together again, facing the mudflats.
4. Ask them to take a good long look at the mudflats (30sec) then ask them to close their eyes. In a primordial voice (long, slow, low tone) state the following:

“Hundreds of millions of years ago, before the time of the dinosaurs, the land was covered with swamps, filled with huge trees, ferns and other large leafy plants. The water and seas were filled with algae – like the green stuff that forms on a stagnant pool of water. This algae is like millions of tiny plants. [pause]

Over time, the trees and plants died, and they sank to the bottom of the swamps of oceans. There they formed layers of a spongy material called peat.  Over many hundreds of years, this peat was covered by sand, and clay, and other minerals. The layers of swamps and algae were compressed and buried. [pause]

The mudflats in front of you are like primordial swamps, with hundreds of tiny organisms living in the sand. Millions of years ago when swamps like this existed, over time, more and more sand and clay and rock piled on top. The layers began to weigh more and more. As the layers began to be pressed down, the peat was squeezed and squeezed until the water came out of it and it eventually, about 280 to 360 million years ago, it turned into coal, oil and natural gas – what we call fossil fuels. [pause]

Today, we take these fossil fuels from the earth and use them for various things – cars, factories, to make electricity. [students could open their eyes now]

To find the oil and natural gas, companies drill through the earth to the deposits deep below the surface. The oil and natural gas are pumped from below the ground by oil-rigs. They then usually travel by ship or through pipelines to large storage tanks and refineries.

Coal is mined out of the ground. Some coalmines are dug by sinking vertical or horizontal shafts deep under ground, and coal miners travel by elevators or trains deep under ground to dig the coal. Other coal is mined in strip mines where huge steam shovels strip away the top layers above the coal. The coal is usually shipped by train and boats, and sometimes in pipelines. [pause]

Fossil fuels take millions of years to make. We are using the fuels that were made more than 300 million years ago, before the time of the dinosaurs.”

1. Ask students to open their eyes. Entertain any questions or comments.
2. Facilitate a brief discussion about fossil fuels (5-10min):
   • What are fossil fuels?
   • Where and how do we use them? (oil, coal, natural gas)

Talk about how fossil fuels are the fuels that we use in our car – probably the most prominent use of oil and gas in this region.

• Are fossil fuels renewable or non-renewable?
• Do you think we are using them quickly or slowly?
• Since they are non-renewable, why shouldn’t we use them quickly?
• What are some impacts of using up fossil fuels?

Introduce global warming/climate change if students don’t say it; tell them we will also talk more about this later in the camp. Emphasize that once fossil fuels are gone, they are gone.

1. Now, explain that students can explore the mudflats and find some of the organisms that live here. Provide buckets, shovels, and magnifying glasses. Ask student to collect some organisms to view under the dissecting scope. Ask students to take notes about 3 different organisms in their journals – they could write descriptions of them, or draw them, or represent them in any creative way they wish. (45-60min).
2. Ask students to gather again, and explain that we will return to classroom to view the collected organisms.
3. Walk to The Ecolodge classroom (15 min)
4. View collected organisms under digital dissecting scope (15-20min).
5. Invite students to comment and ask questions.
6. Invite students to draw organisms in their journals.
7. Close by reiterating that these are the types of organisms that might have been compressed millions of years ago into peat, which formed fossil fuels. We put dead animals in our cars!