Lesson Plans

Fish Kills!

Fish Kills! is an open-ended inquiry activity intended for secondary school students. This project gives students the opportunity to formulate their own research questions, explore and locate information, assess their findings, and present their information. This project supports the National Science Teaching Standards B and E, and the National Science Content Standards A,D, and F.

Information About Your Task
Are you convinced that fish kills are worth investigating? Do you think a fish kill might affect you one day? What would happen if a fish kill happened today in your watershed area? What type of problems might it cause? What if you and your family had to pack up and move to a place where there was a constant threat of a fish kill?

During this investigation, you will focus on one specific fish kill. To be specific, you will pick a specific fish kill occurrence, place yourself in that location and time, and then determine the "effect" it would have on you!

Discuss with your group any specific fish kill that you have heard about including the fish kill that occurred in the Lake Iluka simulation. Do you remember any details or facts? Record these details in your journal.

The Inquiry Process

Before you begin your investigation, you should think about how you are going to accomplish this major task. Have you thought about the exact topic that you will explore? How about where you will look? Will all the information that you will find be worthwhile? How will you show the results of your investigation?

The following steps will help you with this, and we strongly suggest that you use them while you do your investigation.

1. Define Your Question:

Think about the specific question that your group will investigate for this project.
Well... what do you want to investigate? It should be something that is interesting to you. Also, the question you choose will "drive" your investigation. Let's start by looking again at the main focus for our inquiry:

During this investigation, you will focus on one specific fish kill. To be specific, you will pick a specific fish kill occurrence, place yourself in that location and time, and then determine the "effect" it would have on you!

OK. Now we have a point to start from. Remember to put yourself in that location and time... use your imagination! What effect would that fish kill have on you?
To help with your question, think about these statements and record your ideas in your journal.

As you can see, if you try to put everything in your question it gets way too big. Try to focus in on the area that interests you.

Hopefully, after quite a bit of thought and discussion with your group, you will have one driving question. Record this question in your journal and draw a BIG box around it.

--->page 2 of 3, Fish Kills!

Download PDF version of the complete Fish Kills! lesson plan

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