Nature Hike

I had eight year olds for the two hour hike.  I was prepared to do a lot more activities than we had time for so I could give them lots of choices along the way.  I tried to pay attention to varying stopping and looking and moving along so that we'd end up at the vernal pond at our correct time.  It worked pretty well.  I included an art activity that really held their attention for even longer than I thought it would.  We used various flower petals and leaves to make our own paint by rubbing them onto water color paper.  The students were really excited when a white flower made a yellow mark. Violets and dandelions work really well for this activity.  I also did the string and the ant activity where the kids get down on the ground and follow a piece of yarn with a magnifying glass.  This went over well also.  When we got to the log rolling I had stuffed my bag with one of the laminated sheets i had made of things you find under a log.  I also had printed it out and cut out individual invertebrates for the kids to each have one to find.  I told them they would be collecting information like scientists and they would take turns three at a time just counting how many of each critter was there.  This went over so much better than just having them all crowd over the same log fighting over who gets to hold a worm.  It was a very good day.  What I did to facilitate learning was to give them choices, show them how to explore things up close and use their observation skills.  What I would like to have done better is to involve the adults more than I did.  I realized I never got to know the teachers names, although I was proud of the fact that I did learn all of the kids names.

Teaching Rock Cycle in IN with my mind is WA

Sorry for the late post.  I have been somewhat distracted lately.  It has been very difficult for me stay focused and centered here in Indiana when my mind is in Washington.  This was how I felt on Thursday when I taught Rock Cycle too. 

Sometimes you just don't feel like teaching on the day that you are scheduled to teach.  I guess the trick is learning how to compartmentalize your life for a couple of hours and leave all of your own stuff at the door.  I wasn't as bad as Joe the failed naturalist.  I didn't tell the kids any details about my life, but I may have lacked my normal enthusiasm.  Some kids are going to be excited and engaged on their own and others are not going to care about the rock cycle no matter what we do.  Then there is that group in the middle whose learning will actually be effected by the quality of our teaching and our attitudes.  There are always some in the group who might just fall in love with the idea of spending the day outdoors if we can be present and happy no matter how we might otherwise feel.  Figuring out how to do that in the next four weeks is my challenge to myself. 

Feathers and Frogs

4/24/12

Feathered Frenzy – Homeschoolers

Last Thursday I had the eight year olds in feathered frenzy.  Ken was doing the introduction and asking all sorts of great questions about birds and spring and the kids had a lot of very knowledgeable answers.  Homeschoolers really do benefit from concentrated one on one attention.  It did leave me wondering if there was much left to teach them and if I could keep their attention but as the day unfolded I realized they were really into the experience.  The morning was all about the birds with the stations and went pretty seamlessly.  We all were wondering if the “feet” portion was going to go over for a full ten minutes so I brought in colored pencils and divided up a page into four squares for the kids to draw the three different kinds of feet and the blank for a fourth foot that they made up or had seen on a bird.  The time was filled and then some.  Yay, art!  As Carli mentioned in our wrap up, the afternoon was such a contrast from what we had done in the morning.  There was very little about birds but was engaging nonetheless.  There is so much going on in the woods and meadows right now it would have been hard to keep them focused just on the birds and so I think most of us opted for doing a variety of activities.  My group wanted to see the meadow and where I had found the water snake.  I decided to take them to the edge and have them observe where they thought the water might be.  You can’t see the water from where we were but I told them to look for plants that looked different than the surrounding plants.  They went right to it.  That was cool.  We ended up at the dipping pond and the kids helped me find tadpoles for the snakes.  They also were great at catching frogs and we got the pan and the key to the life in the wetlands and identified critters.  I didn’t know until the end that one of the Mom’s with me was a Montessori teacher.  She complimented me on how I had given the kids choices and provided a variety of things and didn’t try to make the entire group always do the same thing at the same time.  That felt really good.

Teaching Reflection 1

The only teaching experience that I had the opportunity to serve this week was the Feathered Frenzy. I have always been excited about birds, so I was looking forward to this practicum day. The day went as many of the teaching days have, but it did seem that it was hard to keep the student's attention. There were many times at the stations where it seemed like they didn't care what I was saying, they only wanted to play with whatever was in front of them. I had the second grade age group (7 year olds). The hike was much different, in that they would be attentive to the lessons I was going through.

One of my favorite parts of the day happened near Onion Bottom. We were scouting a pileated woodpecker and I asked the kids if they remembered Woody Woodpecker. A few did. We started making a laughing noise, and the pileated responded. The kids really got a kick out of this, and it was hard to get them to move on. Around to the other side of Onion Bottom and we saw a huge water snake and several bull frogs and a blackbird singing above. It was a grand moment. All of this ended with a finale at the observation deck: three groups converged together to see dozens of water snakes and frogs swimming in the water below.

If I could change anything about the day it would be to talk about dinosaurs. Instead of ignoring science and history, I think it would have been incredible to talk about the history of birds, and how a majority consensus of paleontologists think that modern birds are living remnants of a line of theropods. How cool for young children, who are already excited about dinosaurs and birds, to find out that they are linked through evolution. There is no debate among credible scientists regarding evolution; it seems dishonest to ignore this, or worse, teach random myths in its stead. I do understand that the group specifically requested no talk of scientific fact evolution, and that our primary goal is to get kids excited about being outside, and excited about the natural world. And yet, how short-changed these children will be once they get out of their homeschool group and into the real world. As an educator, I respected their request; as a scholar, I can only shake my head.

ww 4/20

Wonderland Wetlands April 20 5th graders are remarkable. Is age10 a crossroads, a milestone, in development? Tom, Aaron, Laurina and I had groups of 17 ish in the four stations, and it seemed easy and effortless (except setup and cleanup). I was hesitant about wetlands. The addition of a hike seemed like the best fit for me. I've taught wetlands once or twice, and observed once. I felt like I didn't really have enough knowledge of macro invertebrates to do justice to the sorting station, especially with smart 5th graders. I ended up doing sorting and the watershed activity for all four of the groups. I'm glad I did. Being face to face, nose to nose, with students at the sorting station reminded me of many important things I've learned with teaching this year. We are facilitating discovery. We are asking questions. We are taking a personal interest. We are modeling honesty and authenticity. We are the teachers. The sorting station is all about discovery. The large group size made that challenging at times, but redirecting attention and passing around spoonfuls of cute macro invertebrates worked. I got much better at this by the third or fourth group. The watershed activity was presented in the same 30minute block as sorting. This is all about asking questions. And listening to answers. Why should or shouldn't the waste water treatment plant or the landfill be located on the hill? I relaxed significantly by the 2nd or 3rd group, and that allowed me to treat students more personally than when I was trying to get things right, in take 1. The personal connections over the sorting table were my favorite part of the day. Honesty - if you don't know, you gotta say you don't know. I don't know some of these creatures. what can we find on the key to help us ID them? It's been a great year of teaching.

Wetlands

I love leading hikes.  I love seeing what's out there.  I love when students point out things that I missed.  I love the new growth and the sound of the birds.  This was my first time to teach WW.  The fact that it was my first time made me somewhat more nervous than  those last 4 weeks of Sugar Bush.  I found the lab time challenging, from the standpoint that after about 4 scopes the students seem ready to do something else.  The first group was especially fidgety due having spent time on the bus, watched the power point and then be asked to sit yet again.  The second group, having hiked first, seemed much more ready to sit and look at the specimens.  I did like having two halves prior to lunch and then the other two, rather than trying to do rotational stations.  Logistics is critical, and can make a huge difference in the flow of the day.  It was also especially wonderful to have support (Jane) to care for the fire and prep some pieces between groups.  I learned the importance of thinking through all the pieces of the day, this is why lesson planning is important. During Sugar Bush, so much of that was done for us, that I didn't get that same sense. 
My highlight was seeing the goslings with both my hiking groups.

Wonderful wet 5th graders in a wetland

I taught wonderful wetlands last Friday, which was really fun. I did the dip netting with them to find the macros. It was really fun to be out there with a good group of students like we had and it was really nice to be out in the water. However, the one thing that really bothered me was the lack of teaching and more supervision of the students that I had to do. Yes they were a good group but it seemed like all every 2 seconds someone was yelling out for help, because they were stuck or they fell in. All in all I must of had about 12 students fall in and get completely soaked. Which was funny for the teachers and myself.
I really tired to teach the students about how to search for macroinvertebrates and how to properly identify some of the basic ones in the field. However, the for the most part they were more concerned with not falling in. Which a lot of them didn't do so well at.
Dispit the somewhat lack of teaching I did, it also seemed like the students weren't that interested in dipping at all. Which was a really downer for me considering I love sampling and collecting macros. May be it was just the group that we had and other groups will be more interested in sampling.
I also must comment on the schedule that we used that day and how effective it was. the movement of the groups was really fluid and the whole day ran nicely. So I would recommend using that schedule again with the larger groups.
One thing that was discussed was cutting down the power point and moving the macroinvertebrate slides to somethings where they learn about them at the sorting station or dipping station. That way it cuts back on the amount of time the students are sitting up in the loft and more time out sampling or learning.

Herpes More Popular Than Birds- Say Homeschoolers

Last week I was a part of the education team involved with delivering the Feathered Frenzy program.  I was a little nervous for the day to begin, because it became evident that these students knew a lot about birds.  A lot of them knew more than me.  Once we got into groups and began the first station the nervousness immediately disappeared.  It was so much fun.  My group had students around 10 years of age.  They were calm and cool.  As it turns out I was able to teach them some new information.  It was a great morning.
After lunch we went out on the trails to look for birds.  We heard a couple birds, but that was the extent of our birding.  The group became fascinated with butterflies hanging around the Autumn Olive.  One boy found a couple red-back salamanders under two separate logs.  As I could tell they were very interested in herpes we made our way to the vernal pond.  Most of the students had been there before and new the routine.  They had a great time collected macro-invertebrates and naming them.  They found caddis fly larvae and a right handed snail.  That was a good sign.
Lastly we made our way to the observation deck at Onion Bottom.  What an experience.  There were water snakes all over the water, giant bullfrogs, turtles, and tad poles the size of my fist.  It was a stupendous ending to our nature hike.
I fostered student learning by allowing them to choose what we did while on the nature hike.  I facilitated learning by asking questions related to our experiences and answering questions they asked me.  What did not work was using knowledge learning during the morning stations to identify birds, but I am pretty sure they do that at home.

4/24

Last week I had the opportunity to teach at the only Feathered Frenzy program scheduled for this season. I am glad I got to take part in this homeshcool day, with many of the same students we’ve worked with before at other programs. The program is similar to other programs at the Learning Center with a powerpoint presentation, stations and a hike. This time all about birds. The presentation is a good one for the material, Paul went through it with zest. The stations all ran smoothly, but the feet station was a hard one to fill the time with. I was with the older students, 13 and up. I got them to walk like or act like they were using the different types of bird feet. They looked silly, but were having fun with a kinesthetic activity. The nest making part of the nest station was great. Many in my group were very inventive and creative in constructing their nest. 

The hike was intended to be about bird sightings. The salamanders, frogs, toads and snakes out on the trail was more enticing to my group. We walked as pairs. Each group with a set of binoculars, to search for and identify birds. Most of them ended up in my hike bag before long. And, most of the shoes were wet before we returned to the Learning Center. On the hike, all of the students interacted well with each other and myself. There were many questions and many good ideas and answers from other students in the group. This walking and talking on the trail is great. I hope to be able to include more natural history interactions into my future classroom.

This week, I will be doing a Rock Cycle and Exploring Nature. I am excited about the Rock Cycle. I taught and did the intro in the fall. It’s a really fun program to teach and learn. The school wants a swamp gas demo, this could be interesting...

Wild and Wonderful Wetlands

This past Thursday, I got back into the practicum swing of things with what I would probably consider to be my favorite program: Wonderful Wetlands. Why it's my favorite I can't say for sure, I think I just really like the diversity of all the activities. You've got a nice somewhat-formal powerpoint lecture to kick it off, there's a chance for the kids to sit down at a stereoscope and do some laboratory observation, there's the down-and-dirty hands-on experience of dipping in the wetland and then sorting the macros they find, and of course there's a an energy-burning game that even carries an educational message with it. Oh, and the new addition of a fun and engaging hike around the wetland is the cherry on top!

Aaron, Sara, Laurina, and I had the privilege of working with a great, inquisitive, well-mannered group of 5th graders. It was a big group though, and there's NO WAY the program would have been as successful as it was had Jane not decided to stop by and see if we could use any help. She was our fire-starter, bell-ringer, and all-around awesome supporter. We were using the new WW schedule, which worked really well overall, I thought, but when that schedule is used, there must be an additional person on to be support/coordinator. Also, when that schedule is used, the people teaching that day must do some dipping as part of the set-up routine, since there will be one group of students who are supposed to be sorting before any macros have been collected.

I tried something a little different with the scopes, which I thought I should share, although I'm not sure if it was a success or a failure. Rather than having them sit at a scope for a minute and then rotate until everyone had gotten to see everything, I had the students just stay at one scope with one specimen for five minutes while they drew a picture of what they saw in the scope, and wrote down some observations. After that, I went around the room and had each student talk for 30 seconds or so about what they observed. It seemed to go pretty well. I'm not sure if the students were really exposed to as many specimens as they would normally be, but I felt the skills they practiced in making observations and then presenting on those observations were a worthy trade-off.

One last thing! The students REALLY seemed to like the wetland hike. We tried it with the scavenger hunt and they were all really into it. I highly recommend including the hike when you teach!