• Unit Overview
  • Overview
  • Guiding Question
  • Grade Level/Audience
  • Unit Concepts
  • Standards
  • Education and the Environment Initiative
  • Tips for Managing the Unit
  • Unit Assessment
  • Materials Needed
  • Background Information
• Unit Activities
  • Unit Activities
  • Activity 1: Getting to Know Salmon and Steelhead
  • Activity 2: The Incredible Journey
  • Activity 3: Community Art Project
  • Activity 4: Community Survey
  • Activity 5: Salmon and Steelhead Creek Walk
  • Activity 6: Defining Our Watershed
  • Activity 7: Watershed Web Search
  • Activity 8: Mapping Our Community
  • Activity 9: Salmon and Steelhead Life Stories Web Search
  • Activity 10: Designing for Salmon and Steelhead
  • Activity 11: Creek Monitoring
  • Activity 12: Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project
  • Activity 13: Community Celebration
• Participant Activities
  • Participant Activities
  • Watershed Web Search
  • Salmon and Steelhead Life Stories Web Search
• Materials List
• Resources
  • Resources
  • Information about Salmon and Steelhead
  • Watersheds
  • Aerial Photographs and Mapping
  • Resource Agencies and Organizations
  • Restoration Projects
  • Monitoring
  • Art Projects
  • Surveys and Community Mapping
  • Other Curricula
  • Stories and Music
  • Raising Salmon and Steelhead
  • Videos
  • Scientific Supply Companies
  • Recipes
• Acknowledgements
  • Acknowledgements
  • Adopt-A-Watershed
  • California 4-H Youth Development Program

Tips for Managing the Unit

Resource Professionals
Using the Internet
Articulation
Identifying a Study Site
Planning Field Study Trips
Water Safety
Timeline
Participant Teams

Resource Professionals
Collaboration with community individuals, organizations, and agencies is a cornerstone of the Adopt-A-Watershed and the UCCE 4-H Youth Development programs. For this unit, you will want to set up a partnership with one or more such resource professionals before you begin. Explain that you want to work with them to help increase participant understanding of the connection between watersheds, people, and salmon and steelhead, and that you hope participants will be able to gather helpful data and information for them. We have provided some suggestions in the Resources: Resource Agencies and Organizations section to get you started.

Contact these resource professionals when you need assistance with planning and completing the activities. (See the specific activity for more details.) Activities where you might seek help from a resource professional are listed below.

Using the Internet
Two activities in this unit involve participants in an internet search. Both activities provide a list of websites from which participants will gather all necessary information. As you know, you will also want to have a discussion with the participants on how to safely use the internet. There are likely firewalls already in place on your facility's computers, which will ensure that the participants are safely using the internet. Most important for this unit is to stress to participants that they will be able to find all the information they need on the websites provided with the activities and on the resource pages.

Articulation
This unit can be used alone or as a complement to other Adopt-A-Watershed and 4-H units. If other grades are part of the Adopt-A-Watershed program at your school, become familiar with how this unit fits with the other Adopt-A-Watershed units being used.

Whenever possible, gear current projects to past projects. Find out what participants have done in past years through either the Adopt-A-Watershed or 4-H programs by talking to their previous leaders or teachers.

Identifying a Study Site

If possible, identify a site that is known to support salmon and/or steelhead either currently or historically. Ask a resource professional familiar with salmon and steelhead in your area to help you identify an appropriate site or sites (see Resource Professionals ). Be sure to consider safety issues when choosing a site (see Planning Field Study Trips and Water Safety sections below).

If a study site has been identified in the past through your organization’s Adopt-A-Watershed program, check files to find information, maps, and photos for the site.

Obtain permission for the group to visit the site you select and schedule all field trips well in advance.

Planning Field Study Trips
The following suggestions will help your field study trips run smoothly and safely:

• Get permission to use the site from the landowner or land manager.
• Schedule all field study trips well in advance.
• Visit the field study site - even if it’s the schoolyard or neighborhood - before you take participants there.
• Note any potential hazards (broken glass, steep slopes, poisonous plants, traffic, etc.). Plan to avoid any hazards, or mark them with flagging and draw participants’ attention to them. Also see the Water Safety section following.
• Make plans to accommodate participants with special needs, including those with physical disabilities. Assign helpers to assist these participants with tasks such as signing, translating, carrying, pushing a wheelchair, etc. Be sure the tasks are clearly defined.
• Locate nearby restrooms for the field study trips.
• After you set the date for the field study trip, arrange transportation, chaperones, permission slips, and lunches.
• If possible, arrange for a salmon and steelhead resource professional to accompany you on the field trip and to help answer participant questions or point out interesting features.
• Set behavior expectations with very clear rules, rewards, and consequences for the field study day. Emphasize the importance of safety and following directions.
• Inform participants and chaperones of appropriate clothing for the study trip. They should wear sturdy shoes and socks, (not sandals or flip-flops), long pants (not shorts), and long-sleeve shirts, especially if poison oak or ticks are a possibility. They should also wear jackets or hats, depending on the weather. They should bring drinking water and a daypack.
• Bring along a first aid kit, water, handwipes (so participants can clean their hands before lunch), and extra warm coats (in cooler weather), or hats and sunscreen (in warmer weather).

Water Safety
Working next to a creek full of water presents special safety issues that you should consider before heading out with a group of participants.

• Check with your administration about any special rules or precautions for participants on a creek-side field trip.
• Work with your salmon and steelhead resource professional (see Resource Professionals ) to find a study site that is safe for participants.
• In late spring, summer, or early fall the creeks in California will likely have quite low flows, allowing participants to wade in to check gravel, collect water samples, etc. Whenever possible, schedule field trips away from the rainy season, when flows may be flashy.
• Decide with your resource professional whether it would be safe (and appropriate) for participants to wade into the water. If so, make sure that participants know never to go deeper than their knees. At that depth, if they fall they can always use their arms to keep their head above water. If it is not safe to enter the water, make sure participants know that.
• Require participants to stay with their team members, and make sure that they know to report to an adult if something unsafe happens to a team member. If possible, find out which participants can swim and which cannot.
• Make it a rule that participants must stay in line-of-sight of an adult.

Timeline
The time you will need for these activities will depend a great deal on how deeply you and your participants want to explore. Times are based on group sessions of approximately one hour. The entire unit will take at least 30 contact hours with participants.

Participant Teams
Many of the activities in the unit suggest that participants work in teams of 4 or 5. For consistency and to aide in assessment of team work, set teams at the beginning of the unit and have participants stay in their teams throughout the unit.