Soil Health Field Investigation

This is the sheet where the worksheet stops being a worksheet and becomes a method.

Students choose three sites, run the same four tests on each, record the data in a shared table, and write a conclusion that has to be supported by their own numbers. The four tests are texture by hand, drainage by timed water, organic matter by visual estimate, and pH if you have strips, which are cheap.

The page provides the protocol and the data tables and deliberately does not provide the answer. Different sites give different results and students have to account for that. The compost heap always wins, which teaches its own lesson about where soil health comes from.

Grade seven is old enough to notice that their method has flaws. There is a box at the end asking what they would change. The best answers we have received have improved the protocol itself.