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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.

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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

13

Environmental Literacy in Action: Abernethy Elementary’s Farm-to-School and School Garden Program

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IMG_0489On a quiet, residential, inner southeast Portland, Oregon street, a little elementary school is breaking new ground for the farm-to-school and school garden movement.

At Abernethy Elementary, students enjoy freshly cooked breakfasts and lunches prepared on site by a trained chef. The meals are often prepared with local and seasonal ingredients, some of which are harvested from the school’s Garden of Wonders. The garden itself is entirely planted, tended and harvested by the students, who use it throughout their school day as a “learning laboratory. “ Read more

Dec

8

Feature articles

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

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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.

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Nov

29

Reviews

Filed Under Resources | Leave a Comment 

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