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Discovery Watersheds: What Youth Can Do For Water And Themselves
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There are many projects that youth can become involved in to help protect and conserve local water resources. Service-learning helps youth gain a better understanding of their communities and how their actions can make a difference.
Hands-on community service projects are an important addition to youth water education. Learning about the science of water will help youth to make responsible decisions in the future, but it’s not likely to generate significant excitement about water science or water-related careers.
Service-learning helps youth gain a better understanding of their communities and how their actions can make a difference.
It is also a perfect opportunity to provide youth with experiential learning opportunities (enhanced learning through thoughtful reflection during and after experiences) and even more importantly, inquiry-based learning opportunities, where youth can use their own life experiences to develop experiments to test in the natural world. Inquiry-based learning has been shown to lead to increased conceptual understanding and the greatest positive difference in science learning (Carmichael, 2010).
There are many projects that youth can become involved in to help protect and conserve local water resources. Projects might be completed on school grounds, at home, in a community park, on a farm or wherever help may be needed. Consider some of these ideas:
-- Create a school natural area around an existing water resource (pond, stream, etc…) to use as a future learning laboratory;
-- Find an alternative to bare soil areas on school grounds or in a community park;
-- Hold a water conservation campaign or contest school-wide;
-- Conduct a thorough leak assessment of home, school or community buildings and work to remedy any discovered problems;
-- Choose a local stream or pond to conduct regular water quality testing;
-- Try using alternatives to hazardous cleaners and other household substances and hold an awareness event to teach others the same;
-- Be part of a streamside (riparian) tree planting effort or help with the maintenance of a recently planted riparian area; and
-- Help install rain barrels or a rain garden where stormwater runs off of a school, home or community building roof.
When choosing a project, the most important thing is to make sure that the youth are the ones who make the decision. A great resource for guiding the decision making process so that the project is one that will serve a true need in the community is Give Water a Hand (University of Wisconsin, 1996.)
This leader guide and youth activity book series walks you through the process of understanding the importance of water, identifying needs in various parts of the community and designing a successful service project.
Penn State Cooperative Extension can provide you with additional information about water quality issues that can also help choose a worthwhile service project.
Visit Penn State Cooperative Extension Water Resources online webpage.
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4/4/2011 |
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