Maine Memory Network

Maine's Beneficial Bugs: Insect Sculpture Upcycle/ Recycle S.T.E.A.M Challenge

Grade Level: 3-5, 6-8 Content Area: Science & Engineering, Visual & Performing Arts
In honor of Earth Day (or any day), Students use recycled, reused, and upcycled materials to create a sculpture of a beneficial insect that lives in the state of Maine. Students use the Engineer Design Process to develop their ideas. Students use the elements and principles to analyze their prototypes and utilize interpersonal skills during peer feedback protocol to accept and give constructive feedback.

Primary Sources: Daily Life in 1820

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies
This lesson plan will give students the opportunity to explore and analyze primary source documents from the years before, during, and immediately after Maine became the 23rd state in the Union. Through close looking at documents, objects, and art from Maine during and around 1820, students will ask questions and draw informed conclusions about life at the time of statehood.

Wabanaki Studies: Out of Ash

Grade Level: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: Science & Engineering, Social Studies
This lesson plan will give middle and high school students a broad overview of the ash tree population in North America, the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) threatening it, and the importance of the ash tree to the Wabanaki people in Maine. Students will look at Wabanaki oral histories as well as the geological/glacial beginnings of the region we now know as Maine for a general understanding of how the ash tree came to be a significant part of Wabanaki cultural history and environmental history in Maine. Students will compare national measures to combat the EAB to the Wabanaki-led Ash Task Force’s approaches in Maine, will discuss the benefits and challenges of biological control of invasive species, the concept of climigration, the concepts of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and how research scientists arrive at best practices for aiding the environment.

Maine Monochromatic Oceanscape

Grade Level: 6-8 Content Area: Visual & Performing Arts
This lesson plan will give students an overview of the creatures that live in the Gulf of Maine, real and imagined. Students will be able to describe the creatures they learn about, first learning simple art skills, and then combining these simple skills to make an Oceanscape picture that is complex.