Wachstumshormone

Dec

21

Lessons for teaching in the environment and community

Filed Under Blogs, Environmental Education, Inquiry, Jim Martin, Place-based Education, Questioning strategies, Schoolyard Classroom, Science | Leave a Comment

“Lessons for Teaching in the Environment and Community” is a regular series that explores how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula.

Part 6: The Easy Part

by Jim Martin, CLEARING guest writer

fox sparrowWe’ve been exploring science inquiry, starting with doing a casual observation in a natural area. In the last blog, I found an inquiry question. What did it tell me to do? I discovered how straightforward the Investigative Design is when it is built upon a clean inquiry question. The inquiry question I finally chose was, Where in trees do Fox Sparrows spend most time? That tells me what to do. Here are the steps it will take me to answer it.

ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article. (See box in right sidebar)
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This is the sixth installment of “Teaching in the Environment,” a new, regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,  and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here.

Dec

8

Feature articles

Filed Under Environmental Education, Environmental Literacy, Feature articles, Perspectives, Place-based Education | Leave a Comment

eco-justicecoyotesteachingsWildWordsgreentsunamisquareexpeditionarylearningwhilesquare

Dec

1

NatureMapping Takes Kids — and Technology — Outside and into Active Learning

Filed Under Citizen scientists, Environmental Education, NatureMapping, Place-based Education | Leave a Comment

A data-collection program brings real science to school — and startles the professionals.

By Diane Petersen

Ian’s work as a scientist began with a contradiction: “The scientists said that you can’t find any horny toads here. And I said, ‘My dad and I go out and catch them.’” The 13-year-old has now traveled to Idaho and California, where he and three classmates surprised working scientists by describing new discoveries about where the 3-inch-long lizards live and what they eat. “One man said that we presented better than most college students did,” says Ian.

Ian is one of more than a dozen of my students at Waterville Elementary School, in Waterville, Washington, who have spoken at scientific conferences throughout the country. Their subject: short-horned lizards (Phrynosoma douglasii), also called horny toads, which are native to our rural area and are a part of my students’ world. The creatures aren’t an obvious vehicle for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. But through their work on horny toads as part of a nationwide project called NatureMapping, my students honed those very skills and made a real contribution to science.

Read more

Nov

28

Sowing the Seeds of Place and Community-based Learning

Filed Under Citizen scientists, Place-based Education, Service learning | Leave a Comment

Slough(small)

by Becs Boyd

APlace and Community Based approach can be transformative for students and teachers, schools and communities. Making this approach work means taking a fresh look at the school community, the wider community and the environment, and working out how they can best support each other. Change takes time, and success, naturally, relies on a healthy physical and social learning environment, with good relationships between educators, administrators and students. Many schools will already be connecting students with their local place and helping them discover how to make their own Place in the world a positive one.

Here are some pointers drawn from the experiences of real schools, students and teachers to help plant the seeds of Place in new school communities. Read more

Nov

23

Lessons for teaching in the environment and community

Filed Under Activities, Environmental Education, Environmental Literacy, Jim Martin, Place-based Education, Schoolyard Classroom | 1 Comment

“Lessons for Teaching in the Environment and Community” is a regular series that explores how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula.

Part 4: Inquiry

An Introduction to the World of Discovery….
by Jim Martin, CLEARING guest writer

“We carry with us the wonders we seek without us. There is all
Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous
part of Nature, which he that studies widely learns in a compendium
what others labor at in a divided piece and endless volume.”

- Sir Thomas Browne
Religio Medici

We are, indeed, the wonders that we seek. To discover them, we must look deep within ourselves, to that part which can reach out to the world and comprehend it. Then release ourselves to know.
scatonrcOdd, that we must release what’s within us to know what is outside. Traveling within is a process, best taken a step at a time. Enough steps taken, and your teaching will change.

The change flows from a tack in perspective, a paradigm shift, if you will, that presents you with a new, very functional and accessible view of teaching: what it ought to be, what it can be. But, like discovering your inner self, you don’t get there by hearing about it; you have to make the journey yourself.

ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article. (See box in right sidebar)
(enter password then hit return on your keyboard for best results)

This is the fourth installment of “Teaching in the Environment,” a new, regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that will explore how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests, and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here.

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