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Schoolyard Rain Garden Essentials

Provided by: Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner’s Office

Activity - Outdoors

345

Synopsis

This guide for building a schoolyard rain garden in Michigan includes planning and designing information, a native plant guide, lessons to teach students about rain gardens, and instructions for designing, planting, and maintaining the garden.
In the lessons, 2nd-6th grade students will play a game to model the water cycle and how rain gardens and contaminants can influence it, design a rain garden, and create rain garden fact sheets to post around the school.

Subjects: Science

Authors: Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner’s Office

Region: Michigan

Languages: English

Positives

The timeline and checklist are helpful tools for implementing this resource.
Building and planting a rain garden provides many opportunities for hands-on student and community engagement.

Prerequisites

Implementing a rain garden will require the teacher to plan, measure, recruit 20-30 adult volunteers, and attain funding for the project.
It may benefit students to know how stormwater runoff impacts the environment.
To teach some of the lessons, teachers will need the book, The Puddle Garden, by Jared Rosenbaum and the comic strip, Teenage Raindrop, by David Zinn.

Differentiation & Implementation

To make math connections, teachers can include advanced or older students in the planning and measuring process for the garden.
After designing their rain garden in the second lesson, students can write short persuasive speeches to convince others that their design is the best.
To practice summarization, students can read the materials for building a rain garden and create guides for how to build. Teachers can make copies of the best guides to give to the volunteers.
Before selecting plants for the garden, teachers can lead students in an investigation to determine why native plants are the best choice for a rain garden and which native plants are best suited for the conditions in their garden.
Teachers can use the invasive weeds guide to talk about invasive species in general and how climate change is impacting invasive and native species.

Scientist Notes

Teaching Tips

Standards

Resource Type and Format

All resources can be used for your educational purposes with proper attribution to the content provider.