Rivers Through Time Project Outline

Rivers of Life

Rivers Through Time Project Outline:

Objective 1: Complete preparation activities.

Objective 2: Start to make historic maps & begin creative art/writing projects.

Activity 1: Mapping the Past

Activity 2: On-going Artistic and Literary Expressions

Objective 3: Tools of the Trade

Activity 3: Stratigraphy and Cross-Dating

Activity 4: Artifact Classification

Objective 4: Introducing Garbage Archaeology

Activity 5: It’s in the Garbage

Objective 5: Paper Time Machines - Post Cards

Activity 6: Post Cards from the Past

Objective 6: A Stream Walk

Activity 7:Stream Reconnaissance

Activity 8: A Walk on the Wild Side

Objective 7: It’s Clean Up Time!!

Activity 9: Conducting your River Clean Up

Objective 8: River Junk as Artifacts and as Art

Activity 11: Junk that Imitates Art

Objective 9: Complete mapping, creative art, & writing projects.

Project Introduction

Rivers Through Time will take your students from the present, back through history, and into prehistory as they learn to see their watershed and community through the eyes of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians. This project can easily be combined with elements of the other three ROL projects. For example, you can focus on historic aspects of flooding, or do a Steamer Trunk exchange using artifacts concerning watershed history.

Note: The activities planned for objectives 4-7 involve a river-bank clean up and doing a garbage archaeology analysis and sculpture of the junk collected by your students. This activity is a land activity—for reasons of safety it is recommended that you keep students on the river bank and that they not wade along shore to retrieve garbage visible in the stream. As an alternative, your class can do a cleanup of a city lot, ravine, or street that is within walking distance of your school. This is a perfectly acceptable option that may simplify the logistical challenges of scheduling, adult leadership, and transportation. Since lots, ravines, and streets drain into rivers via the nearest storm sewer or creek, removing litter will benefit local waterways.

OBJECTIVE 1: COMPLETE PREPARATION ACTIVITIES

Preparation Activities:

Getting Ready for Rivers of Life

The activities below are recommended to help your class prepare for their online river adventure. The first activity, Introducing You and Your Watershed, introduces your class at the start of the program. Next is an activity that introduces watershed mapping—an activity that is common to all projects.

Preparation Activity 1: Introducing You and Your Watershed

Introduce your class and community to your fellow Rivers of Life participants by submitting this information in the Introduction Discussion Item in the Conference Center at the start of the program. That way, we will know who is with us. Please include the following information:

•Identify your class, grade level, school, and community.

•Identify your latitude and longitude (you may want to post a world map with pins marking locations of other Rivers of Life schools).

•Identify your school’s watershed, the river that flows through it, and the ocean it eventually empties into (see following exercise if your students need help answering this question).

•Tell which of the four Rivers of Life projects you’ll be undertaking.

•Share any other brief comment or greeting (a couple of paragraphs at most, please), including any work or study your school has done regarding rivers.

•Send, via e-mail or US mail, a photo of your class or school for posting in the Rivers of Life Conference Center.

Preparation Activity 2: Mapping Your Watershed

All four projects involve mapping activities that have common elements as well as elements specific to each project. This introductory mapping activity introduces the concept of a watershed and basic features of a river system, including river source, tributaries, confluences, river mouth, and direction of flow.

For this activity, in addition to using a highway map and the topographic maps as described below, U.S. schools can also consult the watershed maps found at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Surf Your Watershed web site: These maps will help students recognize the borders of their watershed and its position in relationship to nearby towns. More detailed larger-format maps of each watershed can be requested from the EPA web site, though these maps may not be available for all watersheds. The larger-format EPA watershed maps can be received via the Internet or US mail.

Background

How do rivers change as they flow across the land? How do human activities affect the well-being of streams and rivers?

You don’t need gills and fins to appreciate how important rivers are for maintaining and enhancing life. We draw an estimated ninety percent of our drinking water from the world’s rivers—yet that only represents ten percent of the water they provide us. Irrigation uses 65 percent and industry another 25. The world’s rivers were original highways and are still important for commerce, transportation, and recreation. Their banks have become sites for some of our greatest cities. Since ancient times, rivers’ mysterious ways and ever-shifting personalities have inspired musicians, poets, artists, and writers.

Materials

• highway map
• USGS or other topographical maps and photocopies of those maps
• colored pens

Procedure

Wherever you stand on planet Earth, you’re always within a watershed—an area of land that drains into a river or stream. Explore the concept of a watershed by studying the course followed by a nearby stream.

Step 1. Using a highway map, choose a small nearby stream to explore. Since a large stream may cover many of the topographic maps used in this activity, choose a stream less than about 16 km. (10 mi.) long.

Step 2. U.S. schools can order copies of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) topographic “topo” map (or maps) that show the length your stream. Schools in other countries can check with government offices to see if similar topographic maps are available. A state index of USGS topo maps and the maps themselves ($4 each) can be ordered by calling toll-free 1-800-USA-MAPS. Also, local outdoor stores may have topo maps of streams in your area.

(Note: To introduce the basic features of a watershed, this activity can be completed using any single topographical map [or contiguous series of maps] that has an entire watershed within its borders—it doesn’t have to be a map of a nearby stream. To save time finding and ordering local topo maps, you may find it easier to purchase from a local outdoor store topo maps of a regional or national wilderness area, which are more likely to be stocked than local maps of developed areas. )

Step 3. Photocopy the parts of the maps that show your stream and carefully tape the photocopies together to form one large map.

Step 4. Mark with colored markers the source and mouth of the stream, confluences (meeting points) with any tributaries, wetlands, connected ponds or lakes, and any dams or rapids.

Step 5. Figure out which way the stream is flowing on the map by studying the elevation numbers on those contour lines that cross the stream (descending elevation numbers indicates downstream flow). Draw directional arrows on the stream to show which way the water flows.

Step 6. Trace the watershed boundaries of a small creek that drains into your stream. Follow the creek to its source, then continue uphill until contour lines indicate the land begins sloping downward. This ridge is the “height of land” separating the creek’s watershed from neighboring ones. Trace this meandering ridge line in both directions until you’ve drawn the boundaries of the creek’s watershed.

Reflection Questions

• How many other small watersheds can you find on your map?
• What do colors and symbols on the topo maps suggest about how land is used in your stream's watershed?
• Can you estimate the height of any dams by studying the map’s contour lines? Do symbols and colors suggest what any dams may be used for?

OBJECTIVE 2: MAPPING THE PAST

Activity 1: Mapping the Past

Background

This activity builds on the basic watershed mapping activity described in Preparation Activity 2, above. The basic mapping in that activity introduces important components of watersheds and rivers. In Mapping the Past, your students will create map features that express how humans have interacted with your watershed’s lands and waters through history. Students can develop these maps throughout the length of the Rivers of Life program, either in conjunction with or instead of other activities in Rivers Through Time.

Defining Boundaries. Watersheds can be considered at multiple levels of scale and you will have to define the boundaries for your school’s watershed for this mapping project. The size you choose is up to you, but we suggest something between 10 and 100 square miles (26-260 square kilometers). You can explore the Environmental Protection Agency’s Surf Your Watershed web site ( can generate local watershed maps throughout North America that you can print (see page 15 for assistance in printing web pages). To make best use of these maps, you may want to enlarge them with a photocopier and have your students trace their features on butcher paper or newsprint to create a baseline map that they can add features to in this activity.

Procedures

Step 1. Discuss with your students the following questions and list responses on the blackboard. The intent is not to come up with definitive answers, but to have students assess what they know and don’t know and which questions are interesting. Note and point out which questions are more readily answered and which would require study and research.

1. What are “your” watershed’s boundaries?
2. What primary rivers and streams occupy your watershed and where are their sources?
3. Where are the predominant natural communities in your watershed, i.e., forests, prairies, wetlands, lakes, streams?
4. What cultural groups (including different native tribes) have lived within your watershed since post-glacial times, where have they lived, and what economic activities have sustained them?
5. In what different ways have the watershed’s rivers and lakes been used by people in the past compared to today’s uses?
6. What kinds of land use have taken place historically in the watershed and which natural resources have they relied on?
7. What impacts have historic land uses and uses of waterways had on the watershed’s natural communities?
8. Which human communities in your watershed have developed along river banks and why have they developed there?
9. What animal and plant species once native to your watershed have become extinct and what caused their becoming extinct?

Step 2. After reviewing these questions, organize your students into small groups and discuss and rank the questions according to levels of interest. For the top five or six questions in each group’s list have the students brainstorm what additional sources of information would be useful for answering the question more fully. Then, as an entire class, rank the questions according to interest and brainstorm and list sources of information useful in answering the questions. You might want to add suggestions, including: historic site visits; searching for historic post cards at antique shows and shops; historical society or library visits; field trips to document land use; interviewing family and community members; arranging for classroom visitors; using Internet resources; and conducting newspaper, magazine, and book research.

Step 3. Once the top 4-6 questions have been selected, divide students into small working groups that will be responsible for research and map development of a chosen question. Work with them in developing a research plan that coordinates classroom resources—i.e., arrange for classroom visitors or field trips that can assist most or all groups with their research.

Step 4. When students have assembled enough information to begin adding it to their base maps, they can develop the following map features:

• a set of symbols to represent data, such as locations of natural communities; historic tribal boundaries, villages, and burial mounds; habitats of now-extinct species; and locations of current towns and cities (changes in time may be represented by changing color or shape of symbols or creating multiple maps)
• a legend revealing the meaning of map symbols
• a scale
• a north arrow to orient the map to the cardinal directions

Activity 2: On-going Artistic & Literary Expressions

Background

The information and experiences uncovered by your class in their explorations of the history and culture of your watershed can naturally inspire various forms of creative expression. You can start these at any time during the Rivers of Life program and continue them in conjunction with or instead of other activities suggested below. Here are some ideas:

•create drawings and paintings of historic sites or events

•write a play of past events or lifeways

•prepare albums of historic photos with written non-fiction captions, poetry, or fictional accounts

•find and assemble examples of music, artwork, or writing by local groups of different ethnic traditions that expresses various perspectives toward rivers or nature.

•record on audio tape or video tape oral interviews of community members with different experiences, cultural perspectives, and areas of expertise relating to local rivers.

•Transcribe segments of oral history interviews and print them beside accompanying photographs or drawings that depict the subjects discussed.

OBJECTIVE 3: TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Activity 3: Stratigraphy and Cross-Dating

(This activity is adapted from Intrigue of the Past, an archaeology curriculum developed by the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management)

Background

How can archaeologists tell how old objects are that they dig from the ground? How can they reconstruct how people lived hundreds or thousands of years ago based on the scattered remains of their long-ago lives?

One way is through a careful analysis of the objects found in a particular place using stratigraphy and cross-dating. The following activity introduces these concepts.

Vocabulary

cross-dating: the principle that a diagnostic artifact dated at one archaeological site will be of the same approximate age when found elsewhere.

diagnostic artifact: an item that is indicative of a particular time and/or cultural group: a computer would be a diagnostic artifact of the modern age.

spatial: concerned with space

strata: many layers of earth

stratigraphy: the arrangement of layers of earth representing different geologic events.

stratum: one layer of earth.

temporal: concerned with time

Procedure

Step 1 - Setting the Stage. Stack five books on a table. Tell the students that the books were placed in their positions one at a time. Ask them which book was placed in position first. Which one was placed last? Have your students imagine that each book represents a layer of sediment collecting on the earth’s surface for hundreds or thousands of years. Each book can be thought of as a strata, or a single layer of sediment. The idea that the oldest layers always are found on the bottom of undisturbed layers of sediment is called the Law of Superposition.

Step 2. Using the “Site Near Richfield” activity sheet as a guide, draw a layer near the bottom of the backboard. Show how artifacts are deposited as people live on top of the layer. Then a new layer of sediments is deposited on top of that, by natural processes or by another group of people leaving different types of artifacts. This happens several times until the stratigraphy is built up to present-day levels.

Step 3. Distribute the “Site Near Richfield” activity sheets to the students. Have students answer the questions using the information on the stratigraphy drawing.

Step 4. The artifacts on the activity sheet have been dated based on the age of the stratum in which they are found. Ask your students if they found similar artifacts elsewhere, whether or not they would know approximatley how old the artifacts are. (Answer: yes). How would they know? This concept is known as cross-dating. It is the process by which an artifact type that has been dated in one place can be dated when found elsewhere.

Step 5. Give the “Cross-dating” activity sheet to the students. Ask the students to imagine that Richfield is a town ten miles away from their town. Have them determine the approximate age of the artifacts based on the information from the “Site Near Richfield” activity sheet.

Step 6. Ask the students if they would be able to study the stratigraphy of a site if the strata had already been mixed up by illegal digging. If someone took an arrow point, what kind of information would he or she have removed from the site?