Grades 4 through 5
Human Impact on the Environment
Microplastics traced through a food chain the students built themselves.
Plastic in water does not disappear. It breaks into pieces small enough that a brine shrimp cannot tell it from food, so the shrimp eats it. With fluorescent food you can watch exactly that happen. Put the culture under a UV light and the gut of every shrimp glows. Whatever eats the shrimp takes that plastic one step further up the chain, and a class of fourth graders has just watched the first step of bioaccumulation.
How the lab meets it
What students do that satisfies the standard
NGSS 5-ESS3-1
Standard: Obtain and combine information about ways communities use science to protect Earth's resources and environment.
What the kit does: An honest note first. This code is about communities and solutions, so it is a lighter fit than the two beside it. What the kit supplies is the evidence half. Students have seen the problem happen in their own culture, which makes the research and the solution they propose afterwards their own rather than assigned.
Texas 5.9.C
Standard: Predict effects of changes in ecosystems caused by living organisms, including humans.
What the kit does: Predicting is the verb, and a prediction needs something to test it against. Students say what they think will happen when plastic enters the culture, then look under the UV light and find out. Texas is the closest of the three codes to what actually happens on the bench.
Florida SC.4.L.17.4
Standard: Recognise ways plants, animals and humans can impact the environment.
What the kit does: Florida's most direct match for this content, and a year earlier than NGSS. Recognising is straightforward when the impact is glowing inside an animal on the desk in front of you rather than described in a textbook photograph of a distant beach.
Free downloads
Our Lesson Plans
Each lesson is one Word file. Teacher pages and answer keys first, then the student pages behind the orange PRINT FROM HERE divider.
How Do Plastics Enter the Ecosystem? Grades 3 to 5
What it covers: The microplastics run itself. Fluorescent food goes into the culture, the shrimp eat it, and the UV light shows you where it ended up.
How it is built: One Word file. Teacher notes and answer keys up front, then the student pages behind the orange PRINT FROM HERE divider.
Plan Your Own Experiment. Grades 3 to 5
What it covers: Students design and run their own test instead of following someone else's. A good next step once they have seen where the plastic goes and want to ask their own question about it.
How it is built: One Word file. Teacher notes and answer keys up front, then the student pages behind the orange PRINT FROM HERE divider.
Administrator Guide
One guide for the whole elementary program rather than one per lesson. This is the copy to hand a principal or a curriculum director.