Mass Wasting on the Mississippi

The video shows students the effects of erosion after removing vegetation along hillsides. This video will help students realize the environmental consequences that can occur from simple decisions that people make in their everyday lives.  

Possible Guiding, Compelling and/or Anchoring Questions

• How does the hillside that still has trees compare to the part of the hillside that has been stripped?
• If you were an engineer hired to fix this erosion issue, give one suggestion for how you would fix it.

Classroom Suggestions

• This phenomenon lends itself well as a starter for a driving question board. Provide this clip and a local paper article about the erosion issues along the Mississippi River to get kids thinking of questions. Once students have written 5-10 questions each, have the students pick their top 3 and take turns categorizing all the questions on the board. After categorizing the questions, it should open the class discussion for other ideas and concepts of mass wasting (e.g. risks of building a home on a cliff side, how could the mass wasting be stopped, etc.). The video also provides a great bird’s eye view for kids to see how destructive water erosion can be in a short amount of time. One last suggestion is to use the phenomenon as a segway into engineering solutions for real-world problems and a fun build challenge. Set up a competition to see if the students can construct the most innovative and structurally sound solution. This could include design thinking and prototyping retaining walls or other technology that could help with erosion.    

Related Resources

• Driving Question Board: Step-by-Step guide: If you have never used a driving question board before it is a great way to introduce a lesson and have the students brainstorm different questions to answer. It also reveals what they already know, misconceptions they have, and what they are interested in learning more about.