Science Real World Connections

Time for Kids article on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (click to enlarge)

One of the most important aspects of an authentic lesson is allowing the students to see the real-world connections to the content that they are learning. One example of this was my lesson on how human interactions affect an ecosystem. I found a Time for Kids article that described the effects of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the students had heard of the oil spill, and in this lesson they were able to further investigate and learn, while seeing that the material in their textbooks does relate to their lives.