Welcome Teachers For the past few years, the Delta Science Center has been delivering free of charge Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Educational Resource Calendars to fifth grade classrooms throughout East Contra Costa County. The goal of the Resource Guide Calendars is to help teachers introduce the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to their students. Why a calendar? Calendars are practical and they offer the chance to show off the Sacramento-San Joaquin's beauty and ecological features. Currently the calendars are set as 12 month annual calendars, but the Delta Science Center is considering changing over to student calendar formats offering an August through June format in the future. We'd love to hear teacher feedback on this matter. Please take a minute to e-mail us your opinion. info@deltasciencecenter.org. Why fifth graders? Through our research we've found that fifth grade curriculum best meets the learning age for rivers and water studies. So far we haven't found a local school that specifically teaches about the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, nor when we checked the California State Standards and Benchmarks did we see a section included specifically under that topic. This was very disappointing to our committee as we feel that the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecology is in the hands our local students and they need to know about this vital California resource. Changes for the 2012 Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Educational Resource Calendar: This year the Delta Science Center is embarking on some exciting changes and one of those changes includes the expansion of the our resource calendar. The Center interviewed teachers from several local school districts and found that in order for our resource calendar to be helpful to them we needed to make sure it promoted issues related to the California Standards and Benchmarks. So the committee went through the calendar and the California Standards and Benchmarks and picked topics that are related to the standards. The group decided to expand on the new program by offering Language Arts and History Standards so that we might get more information out. All of this led to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Teacher Resource Guide pilot program.. What is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Teacher Resource Guide? The Sacramento-San Joaquin Teacher Resource Guide is still in the beginning stages, so we are calling it a pilot program. The Guide offers student assignments, experiments and games with information that relates back to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Looking through the Resource Calendar teachers will notice that every month has a topic that relates to the Delta. Topics include water quality and mercury, species of the Delta including endangered species, rich soils of the Delta, including irrigation and farming, invasive weeds and water pollution, watersheds, food chain, water conservations, migration and levees. For each month, the Delta Science Center is working on offering corresponding activities, experiments and more in their Teacher Resource Guide. Some teachers received the first month of the pilot program on a DVD or CD with the copies of the 2012 Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Educational Resource Calendars. The guide is also available to download here below. Feedback? The Delta Science Center is looking for feedback and help from local teachers. Every school district, school and classroom is different and we want this program be a help for everyone. Please keep a watch for our periodic surveys and help us make this pilot program the best it can be. The DSC giving back There are several other programs in the works for the Delta Science Center in 2012. For teachers who participate monthly in this program and let us know by filling out our surveys, sending in copies of student completed forms and pictures of students work, the DSC is offering to put their classrooms at the top of the list for other activities. These activities include tours at Big Break Regional Shoreline in the 2012-13 school year and Delta Science Center Classroom Programs for 2012-13 school year. |
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Teacher Resource >
Teacher Educational Resource Guide |