The "Old" Grade Nine Science Curriculum

Alberta has rivers flowing through many of its urban centers

The textbook "Science Directions 9" portrayed the 1990 Alberta curriculum document with...

• an imaginary river



• running through an imaginary city



• and generating several imaginary issues

The textbook virtually begged for someone to make the imaginary focus more real. Through the use of a field trip to a local river, RiverWatch was born!

Four Curriculum Concepts

RiverWatch meets the four curriculum concepts of the old Grade Nine Environmental Quality Unit in areas where students are expected to:

• describe examples of direct changes to environments (water quality) that occur as a result of human settlement (sewage effluent)
  
  
• identify abiotic factors in an environment (available oxygen in water) which might affect the health and distribution of living things (aquatic invertebrates) in that environment
  
  
• describe procedures used in measuring the presence of a chemical material in an environment (water quality monitoring with Hach science kits)
  
  
• describe techniques used locally for disposal of a waste substance (sewage treatment)

Rich Content

RiverWatch goes far beyond the curriculum requirements of "describing" and "identifying". RiverWatch has students actually "investigating" the issues and "conducting" the measurements first hand!

RiverWatch students investigate issues first-hand

A Time Saver

Many teachers have stated that - not only does RiverWatch match the curriculum very closely - it is the curriculum in their school and it saves a considerable amount of teaching time!

Mandatory Change

The "old" Science 9 Curriculum is still valid until June 2003. At that time, all Alberta schools must change to the "new" curriculum if they have not already done so during the 2002/2003 school year.

Click here to view the actual Alberta Learning document for the "Old" Junior High Science Curriculum in PDF format. Scroll down to the last three pages for "Environmental Quality".