These are the cards I drew - students had to sort themsleves into pollinators and non-pollinators.
This is the "Super Pollinator" I designed - the Hurricat. It blows wind and water. It has wings and sticky fur :-). I would post student designs but I didn't have waivers. I saved a bunch of them though.Things I did enjoy: 1) Doing a really high zipline - I had to climb up a 50 ft pole and then just let myself fall (granted, I was totally harnessed in so it wasn't a real risk... :-). The pole shook. I was freaked out. But I decided that although it was "Challenge by Choice" I'm about to embark on a 28-day Outward Bound course that I chose to do so I need to start getting used to that fluttery feeling that you get when you are doing something that scares you...
2) I also REALLY enjoyed meeting more Teaching Fellows from around the state. I went on an adventure with a group of TFs from WCU. They were awesome.
3) I went for a LONG run in the hills. Hopefully some good OB training :-)
4) Talked to other TFs who really made this trip much more fun. Its neat to hear what people are passionate about.
5) There were two awesome TFs from LRU who went on a food buying expedition with me. One is doing an education internship at the aquarium. SOOO COOL!
So how did this experience tie to the outdoor classroom project?
-It might be a good idea to check if any students at McDougle do things like 4-H, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts. Getting those groups on board may be a good way to facilitate long term maintenence.
-Even with almost no supplies, you can do cool things! (make bracelets with a bead for each serving from each food group you are supposed to eat, pollinator card game...)
-Games, food, and design projects can be effective teaching methods.
-With all the reading I'm doing, I'm becoming a "Place-Based Ed." snob. I really felt like we should take the kids outside and look for pollinators, find erosion, test soil... :-)
On another note, I've been reading another Sobel book - Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators. LOVE IT! Here are the principles he expounds upon:
1) Adventure
2) Fantasy and Imagination
3) Animal Allies
4) Maps and Paths
5) Special Places
6) Small Worlds
7) Hunting and Gathering
What I think is really cool is that with the current outdoor classroom plan, we've already incorporated some of these ideas. We want to have a rock trail and do mapping activities. We want there to be an area students can manipulate to see how water works and how humans impact the enviroment. I also want there to be an area where their are loose parts and students can create shelters like the ones Native Americans would have made. The possibilities are endless!
I'm so excited about the rest of the summer!
UPCOMING:
This week and next week:
-leading a group project at McDougle in Ms. W's class - the goal is to have the students design the outdoor classroom
-keep reading
-follow up with teachers about aspects they want in outdoor classroom and what they want to contribute (if they want to)
-contact NC Botanical Garden about picking good plants
Next Week:
OUTWARD BOUND!!!!!! I will be gone from June 9 to July 8. I'm taking a bus to Asheville, then going on a 28 day Outward Bound course and then taking the bus back. I'm super duper excited but also nervous. No showers, lots of backpacking and rockclimbing... Honestly, I'm already looking forward to the first shower after the course :-)!
Sorry for the traditionally long post!
Question:
Did you have "environmental education" in school when you were younger?
We had an environmental science course requirement in high school, but that was the first one formally called envi sci.
ReplyDeleteBefore then, I suppose it was sometimes mixed in. Some things that come to mind:
6th grade: in "science" class, we kept a garden outside and grew vegetables. Each student was responsible for weekly "garden obs" (observations), in which we had to measure the progress of the plants' growth. They also taught us about pruning fruit trees, etc. We had a honeybee hive in the classroom, and we were also responsible for "bee obs", in which we observed the wiggle dance they do and recorded what we saw. The science department collaborated with the English department that year, and we all had to bring in rubber boots. We went a handful of times on a bus out to different places on Thornton creek, wandered about, took pictures, learned about the watershed, and wrote a fiction story about animals who got lost somewhere on the creek. I guess this is the closest to environmental ed in middle school I can think of.
Sounds cool. Some of my memories are:
ReplyDelete-observing ants w/ my mom (we placed different food near their hills)
-pond collections in 2nd grade
-Sound to Sea in 4th grade
-creating a school garden in 7th grade (it got torn down the next year to put in trailers for the high school)
I took AP Environment in High School so there was alot of taking pond collections, determining the PH of water, but I also took Horticulture which I really enjoyed. We did things like
ReplyDelete- starting a vegetable and flower garden
- building a greenhouse
- we also did work with animals in prep for the State Fair.
Wow! That's awesome! They did not offer that at my school. In my APES class we did a neat succession lab using the grass to pine to hard wood areas outside of our school.
ReplyDeleteNo environmental ed at my school. The closest I got was feeding and observing an anthill on the playground (illegal, according to the teachers who caught me) and trying to discover new plant species in the Forbidden Forest (again, illegal).
ReplyDeleteI did go to Audobon camp. We did pond collections, nature hikes, identified plants/birds/etc. and made nature art.