Purpose
Students investigate the essential question, “What causes people and animals to migrate?” through field trips, A Long Walk to Water, HMH Into Reading Module 7, and a prehistory unit. Working with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Houlton Riverfront Walking Trail, and Littleton Agricultural Museum, students apply map skills, ecology, food-web modeling, sensory poetry, research, note-taking, and prehistory knowledge to explore how water shapes migration, ecosystems, and civilizations. Teams create a water-dependent civilization with maps, two informational reports, a poem, a scientific illustration, and a food web while evaluating solutions for reducing environmental impacts and maintaining biodiversity. Students collaborate, reflect, and revise each product through peer and teacher critique, then present their display of learning and answer questions from families, staff, and community members.
Learning goals
Students will explain what causes people and animals to migrate by connecting A Long Walk to Water, prehistory, map evidence, and observations from partner field experiences. Students will critically read scientific texts, take notes, ask investigable questions, and communicate learning through sensory poetry and two evidence-based informational reports. Students will model matter cycling and energy flow with a food web and scientific illustration, then evaluate and design methods for reducing human impacts and maintaining biodiversity. In teams, students will create and map a water-dependent civilization, revise each product through peer and teacher critique, reflect on collaboration, and present their learning to families, staff, community members, and partners.
Products
Students will create a sensory migration poem, research notes, two informational reports, a labeled scientific illustration, and a model food web showing matter cycling and energy flow. Teams will design a water-dependent civilization with maps, resource systems, migration patterns, and a method for monitoring and minimizing human environmental impacts. Peer and teacher critique will guide revisions of each product, documented through brief team reflections. The final portfolio and civilization model will be displayed for families, staff, community members, and project partners, with students answering visitors’ questions.
Launch
Launch with a read-aloud from A Long Walk to Water, an excerpt from HMH Into Reading Module 7, and migration artifacts from the prehistory unit, then ask, “What causes people and animals to migrate?” Students collect sensory observations and map evidence during visits to the Houlton Riverfront Walking Trail and Littleton Agricultural Museum. The Gulf of Maine Research Institute can provide local migration and aquatic-ecosystem data for teams to examine alongside their field notes. Teams create an initial migration map connecting water, food, safety, climate, and movement, then share questions that will guide their ecology and civilization projects.
Exhibition
Host a “Water, Migration, and Civilization” exhibition for families, staff, community members, and representatives from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Houlton Riverfront Walking Trail, and Littleton Agricultural Museum. Student teams will display their mapped civilizations alongside sensory poems, two informational reports, scientific illustrations, and food-web models showing how water shapes migration, ecosystems, and human survival. Students will present their design choices, answer the essential question “What causes people and animals to migrate?” and explain how they revised their work using peer and teacher feedback. Visitors will leave written feedback, and teams will reflect together on their collaboration, revisions, and new understanding.
