How can humans minimize their effect on ecosystems?

Math 2021-22 (10th Graders)

Science

In this project, students explored the complex web of relationships within ecosystems to better understand their sustainability. Students examined a variety of ecological issues including the impact of human activities on ecosystems. They learned about invasive species and their impacts on established ecosystems and investigated how different management strategies affect the sustainability of fisheries. Finally, students suggested actions humans can take to help sustain ecosystems for the future. The final products were:

a class discussion regarding their predictions over what would happen in 50 years if nothing was done to further influence the situations within each case study they learned about
an explanation of what would happen to the food webs and symbiotic relationships in the kelp forest if senorita fish were overfished and no longer found in the kelp forest
and line graphs that show population curves for wild and farmed salmon over 20 generations at most.

9/10th Predictions

Student Predictions

9/10th Senorita Fish explanations

Student Explanations

9/10th Tragedy of the Commons Activity

Tragedy of the Commons Activity

9/10th Graphs

Student line graphs that show the population curves for the farmed and wild salmon populations.

English

This quarter, students read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Along with the text, students learned about the ecological disaster of the dust bowl and the subsequent migration of farmers for which the book is based on.

Originally, students were going to choose an ecological disaster from anywhere in the world and do research on that event. However, with the prevalence of COVID-19, students research one facet of our lives and research ways in which COVID has affected that area of "life." Students then worked together to create the very first edition of PiSTEM Times: a student-developed newspaper that features all student's work (articles, advertisements, comics, etc.).

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE 9/10TH GRADE EDITION OF PISTEM TIMES

STUDENT EXAMPLES *will be updated after project deadline*

History

In History, we studied the Civil War era all the way through the Reconstruction era. We dealt with the question of Emancipation and what it looks like in our History. Students worked with drafting out answers to the question of, "How we should Remember Emancipation?"

How should we remember Emancipation?

Emancipation Final Product 2

Emancipation Final Product

Math 2021-22 (10th Graders)

The students examined how Quadratics functions and equations can model real world situations. Students used equations to build Train tunnels. We then built a tunnel for a train using our equations and scaling it to model size.

Tunnel Calculations and Finding the equations

Math I (8th/9th Graders)

In Integrated Math 1, we have built upon our knowledge of one-variable statistics in order to better understand two-variable statistics. This allows us to analyze how one variable might be related to another, and to draw conclusions about correlation. To understand how humans can minimize their affect on the ecosystem, we first needed to look at the data and understand the affect we are already having on this planet. Students researched different human actions like over hunting/over fishing, burning fossil fuels, plastic production, deforestation, and invasive species. They then researched the affect of these actions, including population destabilization, climate change, air pollution, water pollution, and habitat loss.

"The x-axis is Plastic Production- Amount of plastic produced each year in million tons. The y-axis is Ocean Pollution- Microplastics in the surface ocean in tons. The correlation is strong because the correlation coefficient is close to one. This means that as plastic production increases, the pollution in the oceans will increase."

"When deforested area increases in million hectares, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also increases in giga tons per year. The graph has a pretty strong correlation because the points are pretty close to the line of best fit. In the future if the deforested area keeps increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will also increase."

"The x-axis is CO2 emissions in billions of tons

The y-axis is fossil fuel consumption in TWH.

It is a pretty strong correlation, as the correlation coefficient is .98, almost dead on.

This means that the more fossil fuels we consume, the number of which has only grown, the more emissions we produce, which has pretty steadily grown. Essentially, the more fossil fuels we use, the more we pollute the Earth."

"The x-axis is the amount of deforestation in km. The y-axis is the amount of biodiversity in index. The correlation is strong because the point on the graph and the line are all in the same area. This means that the longer we go without changing anything we will create more and more species to go extinct due to the increase in biodiversity loss."

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