Introducing this topic
Finding out what students know already, can take time, but provides teachers with valuable information to help students grow in their knowledge and skills. Providing information without strategies, rarely results in learning. Well selected pedagogy makes a huge difference in student learning.
Engaging student's interest and giving them reasons to learn
Students learn best when there is a real purpose for this learning to take place. The need may be the skills required to do a new skateboard flip, which may see students studying YouTube videos of experts for hours, without the need for an adult to tell them "because I said so". If we can hook the student's interest from the get go, we can shift the onus of learning from "because we have to" to "because I want to learn more".
Hooking the students into Ecosystems and Human Impacts
Chris Jordan creates artworks to highlight the statistics of pollution humans create and he also made a film about the Midway Atoll which is also known as the Pacific Garbage Patch. His very powerful video about the Atoll is a great way to start conversations and find out what they already know about ecosystems and pollution. It is a great way to begin the discussion of human impacts as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozBE-ZPw18c This is the link to the video.
Inside/Outside circles is a great way for students to start their thinking (http://www.theteachertoolkit.com/index.php/tool/inside-outside-circles) . A graffiti poster activity is a great way to get students to share their understanding in a visual way (http://www.eworkshop.on.ca/edu/pdf/Mod36_coop_graffiti.pdf) . This can be done as a rotation of the posters around table groups or with post it notes.
Prompt questions you may wish to use include:
You may wish to find out what students know individually using an exit slip with one or two questions from the prompts above and maybe a confidence rating for this topic, e.g. I don’t know anything about ecosystems, I know a little bit about ecosystems, I know a lot about ecosystems.