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The Story Behind the Development of the Curriculum
Everyone loves the ocean, and most people know the ocean through their experiences at the shore, often in an estuary. A sunbather on a barrier beach, the captain of a cargo vessel maneuvering to offload freight in a seaport harbor, an artist painting a scenic salt marsh, shellfishers probing a mud flat, a family in a coastal city strolling along the waterfront, and a couple of kids out for a day sail in a protected coastal bay all depend on estuaries for their activities, yet few can even define the word if asked. Furthermore, human activities such as filling wetlands, armoring the shoreline, and discharging wastewater have seriously impacted the integrity of coastal ecosystems. When asked in a survey about the health of coastal waters, over a quarter of the public reported that they do not know enough about these areas to give an opinion (Belden et al., 1999). Though the public is aware of ocean and coastal resources, detailed knowledge of environmental science, ocean and coastal science, and the ocean’s connection to humans’ well-being is lacking (NEETF, 2005 and Belden et al., 1999). People need to know what estuaries are, how they are related to terrestrial and ocean systems, what important services they provide for humans, and how to restore and protect them.
In response to this challenge, we, in NOAA's National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS), recognized an opportunity to build a national program that would help advance ocean and estuarine literacy, building on and integrating educational and scientific resources across the full NERRS system. Instead of a collection of locally-developed activities, we have worked to create a comprehensive national program, for use by all the NERRS education coordinators, as well as, students and teachers throughout the US. This integrated program was conceived and planned by all NERRS educators and built to meet the best pedagogical designs. Envisioned ultimately as a full K–12 set of activities, development begun with a high school set of modules that we called “Estuaries 101”.
It is thus our pleasure to introduce the Estuaries 101 Curriculum. Focusing on estuaries, the curriculum modules feature hands-on learning, experiments, field work and data explorations. The curriculum consists of four modules, Life Science, Earth Science & Physical Science each using estuaries as the context for developing content knowledge and skills relevant to that domain, and a Chesapeake Bay Module which integrates and deepens the focus on estuarine concepts in a local context.
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Last Updated on: 02-28-2012
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