CLEARING Quarterly Edition Fall 2011
The fall 2011 edition of CLEARING contains news, resources, stories and interviews.Download and read the issue here!
NEW! Lessons for Teaching in the Community and Environment
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This new, regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin explores how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula.
Read series hereINTERVIEWS WITH CONSERVATIONISTS
What is the link between conservation and environmental education? Chris Gertschen, founder and former director of the Sawtooth Science Institute, talks to the leaders of conservation in the west to get their perspectives on the issue.
Read the interviews here
THE BEST OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Learn the secrets of successful environmental education programs! Read the perspectives and opinions of experienced teachers! Discover new ideas that can turn your classroom into an innovative and dynamic hub of place-based learning! The Best of Clearing is full of fresh ideas and old wisdom to help you create powerful learning experiences for your students.
Learn more and buy it today!ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY and the CLEARING COMPENDIUM
Attention: Clearing is currently compiling case studies that demonstrate what ideal school-based environmental literacy programs & activities can look like. These case studies will help teachers understand how to more effectively integrate environmental literacy into their classrooms, and will be featured in the 2011 Clearing Compendium published this fall!
Tell us about a model program that you think deserves recognition!
Read the 2010 edition here!
Teaching Resource Spotlight
Roots and Research in Urban School Gardens
©2011 Veronica Gaylie. This book explores the urban school garden as a bridge between environmental action and thought. As a small-scale response to global issues around access to food and land, urban school gardens promote practical knowledge of farming as well as help renew cultural ideals of shared space and mutual support for the organic, built environment. This book examines the practice and culture of the urban school garden as a central symbol for environmental learning. Roots and Research in Urban School Gardens can be purchased at Peter Lang Publishing.
Guest Writers: Voices of the PNW
, Eckstein Middle School,
Jessica Levine
Seattle, Washington
Gregory Smith,
Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon
Harmony Roll,
Taiga Teacher, Anchorage, Alaska
Lindsay Huettman,
Wilderness Awareness School
Jim Martin, Jul
29
Community-Based Education – The Colquitz Watershed Stewardship Education Project
Filed Under Biological Diversity, Marine/Aquatic Education, Place-based Education, Programs | Leave a Comment
By Pam Murray
A school class at Colquitz River Park in Victoria, BC
Along the Cowichan River, surrounded by the smell of cottonwood resin, an elementary school student discovers that dragonfly larvae look like aliens. In a quiet wetland, a middle school teacher marvels as a guest expert shows his class how to fold cat-tails into duck shaped toys and send them downstream with wishes. In a municipal office, a bureaucrat considers a community proposal, initiated by an elementary school class, to create a new park.
Since 1994, the Colquitz Watershed Stewardship Education Project (CWSEP) has been bringing students, teachers, and the community together to experience educational turning points like those above. Headed by teacher Lenny Ross, the award winning project has successfully instilled an environmental ethic in students of all ages and their teachers by connecting them to the watersheds in which they live.
ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article.
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May
24
by Bill Hanshumaker
Hatfield Marine Science Center
The Southern Ocean surrounds Antarctica and serves as a conduit between the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. Yet because of severe climatic conditions, much of this ocean basin remains unexplored. Polar regions play key roles in the global environment and one goal of our project is to document linkages between changes to the Antarctic ice sheet and the volcano-tectonic seafloor processes in the region. To meet the challenge for continuous monitoring in this extreme environment, researchers from the Hatfield Marine Science Center utilized the Russian icebreaker Yuzhmorgeologiya to deploy an array of Autonomous Underwater Hydrophones (AUH). This new ocean-sensor technology uses cold-water capable, deep-ocean hydrophones to record sounds generated by moving ice sheets, undersea earthquakes and volcanoes; even vocalizations from large baleen whales. When the AUH array is recovered in 2006, sounds that it has captured will enable accurate monitoring of global climate change, as well as identifying previously unknown volcanically active regions on the polar seafloor. Read more
May
19
Lessons of Discovery: Teaching and learning along with your students
Filed Under Activities, Marine/Aquatic Education, Place-based Education, Programs, Schoolyard Classroom, Science | Leave a Comment
Innovative tools allow a teacher to extend class activities on stream ecology and forest history
Forest Grove Community School student taking a closer look at macroinvertebrates living in a stream near the school.
by Charles Graham
I have made an interesting observation about teaching recently. Some of the best lessons are not necessarily the carefully planned and orchestrated units, but rather the ones that grew and took shape as the project progressed. I have found that some of my best teaching has been when I didn’t know the exact outcome in advance and learned something new right along with my students. This has been my experience with environmental exploration into stream ecology and the “Leaf Pack” program. Read more
May
14
Review: Awesome Ocean Science!
Filed Under Marine/Aquatic Education, Resources, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Investigating the Secrets of the Underwater World
By Cindy A. Littlefield
Illustrations by Sarah Rakitin
Published by Williamson Publishing, 2003, 120 p.
Reviewed by Sharon A. Hollander
I review children’s books, and I read through plenty on science and nature. I can honestly say that I felt a wave of relief when I came upon Awesome Ocean Science! Investigating the Secrets of the Underwater World, a Williamson Kids Can! Book.
I recently took home a big stack of books on the environment, and I was disappointed, not to mention bored by most of them. Perhaps appropriate as sources for school reports, I can’t imagine a child spontaneously picking one up for leisure reading. In fact, some of these books would test even an adult without bulletproof interest in the topic. Well-written and visually appealing, Awesome Ocean Science! stood out in the crowd. Read more
Jan
2
Resource: Ocean Currents
Filed Under Resources | Leave a Comment
What causes ocean currents? What impact do they have on Earth’s environment? How have they influenced human history?
This teaching guide for grades 5-8 provides 7 activities for students to explore the causes and impacts of ocean tides and gain an understanding of the influences of wind, temperature, salinity and density on ocean movement.
Students are given the opportunity to explore such real-world situations as the 1990 Nike shoe spill, the raft Kon Tiki, and other oceanic voyages in history.
From Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS). ISBN 0-924886-44-7. $21.00. Order online at www.lhsgems.org.
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