Researching Mercury LESSON PLAN

The document is a comprehensive educational guide designed to teach the Ojibwe language using a scientific case study on mercury. It includes a full English-Ojibwe transcript of a video explaining the mercury cycle—from industrial emissions to biomagnification in fish—and the results of a seven-year ecosystem experiment. The guide provides detailed linguistic support, including sentence breakdowns, a glossary of terms, and a list of new words created specifically for scientific concepts like 'methylmercury'. It also includes a lesson planning form for educators to implement the material as a listening and sentence-structure exercise.

• The IISD Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA) consists of 58 lakes and their watersheds in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, used as a freshwater laboratory to study human impacts on ecosystems.
• Mercury enters water systems as a naturally occurring element in soil or as a waste by-product of industrial activities, including coal burning, mining, smelting, oil refining, and cement production.
• Inorganic mercury released into the atmosphere falls as rain and can be converted by bacteria into methylmercury, a highly toxic form that biomagnifies up the food web, reaching the highest concentrations in large fish, birds, and mammals.
• A seven-year experiment at IISD-ELA demonstrated that mercury added directly to a lake causes rapid increases in methylmercury in aquatic life, while mercury added to the surrounding landscape via plane takes longer to accumulate through runoff.
• The research showed that when direct mercury additions to a lake ceased, methylmercury levels in small fish decreased by 80% within four years, providing evidence to support the limitation of mercury emissions.
• The translation project involved a collaborative process with Ojibwe Elders and language experts to create new terminology for scientific concepts, such as 'biiwaabikowaabo gaa-waawaakeshkaag' for mercury and 'aayaanjibichibowin' for methylmercury.

APA

International Institute for Sustainable Development (2021). Researching Mercury LESSON PLAN. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2021-08/lesson-plan-ojibwe-researching-mercury.pdf

Chicago

International Institute for Sustainable Development. Researching Mercury LESSON PLAN. 2021. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2021-08/lesson-plan-ojibwe-researching-mercury.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=International Institute for Sustainable Development |title=Researching Mercury LESSON PLAN |date=June 2021 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2021-08/lesson-plan-ojibwe-researching-mercury.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{internationalinstituteforsustainabledevelopment2021researching, author = {{International Institute for Sustainable Development}}, title = {{Researching Mercury LESSON PLAN}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2021}, month = jun, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2021-08/lesson-plan-ojibwe-researching-mercury.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }