Students further their understanding of the salmon life cycle and the human structures and actions that aid in the migration of fish around hydroelectric dams by playing an animated PowerPoint game involving a fish that must climb a fish ladder to get over a dam. They first brainstorm their own ideas, and then learn about existing ways engineers have made dams "friendlier" to migrating fish, before being quizzed as part of the game.

This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members and their supporters, images, news footage, an interactive timeline, and other sources about an important campaign to secure the treaty rights and sovereignty of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest. Scroll to begin an exploration of the actions Native Nations took to address injustices.

This online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members, images, objects, and other sources to help students and teachers understand the efforts of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest to protect and sustain salmon, water, and homelands. Scroll to begin an exploration of the Pacific Northwest history and cultures.

In this lesson, students use segments from Nature: Salmon Running the Gauntlet to explore ways in which humans have impacted salmon populations. In the Introductory Activity, students explore different ways in which human actions have helped and hindered salmon populations, including efforts to artificially produce and raise salmon. In Learning Activity 1, students learn about challenges salmon face after being released from hatcheries into the wild, as well as efforts that humans are taking to restore streams and salmon runs. In Learning Activity 2, students explore issues surrounding dams and conduct research on specific dams in the US northwest. In the Culminating Activity, students review information presented in the lesson and debate the merits of human efforts to save salmon. Students write a critical essay about human impact on salmon and propose ideas for future actions. Students discuss their projects with the class.

We have been rearing salmon in our classroom for a long time, and the students love it. The project before this point was very teacher lead and much of the care, and set up was done for the students. We are excited to make a student-led project based unit that will better cover the content and incorporate the standards we are looking to teach.

Through this lesson, students in 3rd-5th grade will understand how the human history of a local creek (Whatcom Creek in this example) affects the health of salmon populations. This lesson is an active way to engage students in graphing through the use of models and uses critical thinking to understand implications of human actions in the past and in the future.

In this video segment adapted from the Yukon River Panel, visit fishing communities along the Yukon River and see how Alaska Native peoples exercise stewardship of salmon to ensure that it remains a central food source and cultural touchstone.

The purpose of this 3 ACT task is to provide students with an opportunity to problem-solve based on a real-world situation (Claims 2 and 4). Due to the nature of the task, there are a variety of mathematical approaches students can take to successfully complete the task, however, the mathematical approach presented in Act 3 of the task addresses CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSF-LE.B.5 (Interpret the parameters in a linear or exponential function in terms of context). This performance task is intended for students with prior knowledge of geometric sequences or graphs of exponential growth, table and graph creation, and pattern recognition. Includes Power Point slides.

SWIMM is a high school curricular program created by EarthGen. For this unit, we offer professional development training and assistance with implementation. If you are interested in implementing this program at your school or district, please let us know! Please contact info@earthgenwa.org for more information. 

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Aquaculture is a critical industry for human food production, and strategies to improve fish nutrition while protecting the environment can help maximize aquaculture output and sustainability. However, the roles of the gut microbiome in fish nutrition are not well understood. To support further research, scientists recently developed SalmoSim, an in vitro model of the Atlantic salmon gut and microbiome. The researchers linked three bioreactors seeded with gut material from adult farmed salmon to simulate the stomach (S), pyloric caecum (PC), and midgut (MG). When a fishmeal “diet” (FMD) was supplied, SalmoSim’s microbial community stabilized in approximately 20 days and was ecologically indistinguishable from the real fish microbiome used to inoculate the system. Switching from the FMD to a fishmeal-free diet (FMF) for 20 days did not affect most microbes (operational taxonomic units, OTUs) in either SalmoSim or real salmon..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module/Geology of National Parks course. Students work with salmon-trace streambed data to study whether removal of a spawning run barrier was effective

 This inquiry unit leads students through the different perspectives behind a decision to have a dam removed. This unit looks at similar Washington state dam removal decisions as well as the complex issue of having the Election dam removed near Puyallup, WA. Students will be introduced to the stories and traditional ways of knowing about salmon that the Puyallup Tribe has built their culture upon. Then they will explore the science behind hydroelectricity and build models to discover how carbon neutral energy is gathered through hydro dams. This inquiry unit ends with students researching different perspectives surrounding the current (2021) decision to remove the Electron dam including: the Tribe’s Fishery department, the ecosystem, the city council, the fishermen and the hydro-electrical company who currently owns the dam. With their research, students will do a socratic seminar to mimic the court case lawsuit that is ongoing against the Electron Dam. 

Washington has changed a great deal in many different ways in the 20th Century – culturally, economically, politically, environmentally, and ecologically. This is the teacher guide companion to The State We're In: Washington (Grade 3-5 Edition) Chapter 5. The resource is designed to engage students with a launch activity, focused notes, and a focused inquiry.

Tribal governments are quite different from state or local governments, because tribes are “nations within a nation.” This is the teacher guide companion to The State We're In: Washington (Grade 3-5 Edition) Chapter 8. The resource is designed to engage students with a launch activity, focused notes, and a focused inquiry.

Decisions our local, state, tribal, and federal governments make affect every forest, every mountain, and every lake and river. This is the teacher guide companion to The State We're In: Washington (Grade 3-5 Edition) Chapter 9. The resource is designed to engage students with a launch activity, focused notes, and a focused inquiry.

This learning sequence is anchored in the phenomena: Salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest are declining.

Part of the job of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is to figure out why salmon populations are declining and create plans for how to help increase fish populations. Throughout this unit, students will engage with the phenomenon of Pacific salmon population decline as they explore salmonid species and discover how WDFW raises healthy fish in hatcheries.

Students will explore salmonid life cycles and discover patterns among life cycles of plants and animals who interact with salmon. Students will then learn what makes healthy habitats for salmon. They will evaluate solutions to the problems of salmon migration above and below dams and examine salmons’ role in a healthy river system. Students will embark on a virtual field trip (in person field trips also available) to a WDFW fish hatchery to learn about current practices in hatchery management and identify ways the hatchery meets the habitat needs of fish. Finally, students will be called to work as an engineering team and help develop a tool to support salmon recovery by working as conservation engineers.

This video segment from FRONTLINE/NOVA: "Harvest of Fear" explores genetic modification of salmon and possible consequences.

Students are introduced to the basic biology behind Pacific salmon migration and the many engineered Columbia River dam structures that aid in their passage through the river's hydroelectric dams. Students apply what they learn about the salmon life cycle as they think of devices and modifications that might be implemented at dams to aid in the natural cycle of fish migration, and as they make (hypothetical) Splash Engineering presentations about their proposed fish mitigation solutions for Birdseye River's dam in Thirsty County.

Terry Williams is blunt when he describes the environmental crisis tribes in the Pacific Northwest are facing: "We’ve lost 90 percent of the salmon population."

As the Tulalip Tribe’s Fisheries and Natural Resources Commissioner, Williams has witnessed the decline of salmon and its impacts on tribal members. For the Tulalip and other tribes in the region, the population crash of salmon is much more than an assault on their economic lifeblood—it is a cultural and spiritual threat to their identity as a people.

The annual springtime Salmon Ceremony puts tribal members in direct touch with their ancestors, and other ceremonies and practices center on the fish through the year. Losing the fish is a strike to the core of the Tulalip people, but they have a long-term vision to restore wild salmon populations to levels that will support their fishing needs.