Cycling Water--gauging rain, painting with salt

“Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.” ― Wallace Stevens

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will increase their knowledge of the water cycle, exploring its properties through a variety of experiments.

Today we:

-watched water condense in a glass jar
-read Ecosystems and Food Chains by Francene Sabin
-labeled the "living" and "nonliving" parts of our own "jar garden" ecosystems
-built a rain gauge
-began tracking our water usage
-painted with salt water
-watched Bill Nye

M and M track their school day water usage

Materials:  glass jar, ice cubes, water, Ecosystems and Food Chains by Francene Sabin, salt, paintbrushes, jar, ruler, permanent marker, black paper, poster board, Bill Nye the Science Guy: Episode 47: Water

Individual Fitness: goal making and heart rate moniteering

Chalet Hill, taken from about a quarter of the way up

Grade Level:  High School

Objective: Students will gain a greater understanding of their bodies and current fitness levels through monitoring their heart rate.  Students will set goals for the semester and begin logging their physical activity.

Mold Gardens, Jar Gardens, Precipitation, Evaporation, and Condensation

“Places matter. Their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society, pedestrianism, equality, diversity (economic and otherwise), understanding of where water comes from and garbage goes, consumption or conservation. They map our lives.” ― Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

M uses her finger to draw on the condensation she created

Grade Level:  Elementary

Materials: Mason Jar, plants, water, trowels, Bill Nye clip

Objective:  Students will explore the water cycle.

Introduction/Hook:  Water vapor/condensation activity

Building a terrarium to learn about the water cycle

Grade Level:  Elementary

Materials: Jar (with lid), small plants, pebbles, activated charcoal, soil, water, trowels

Objective: Students will learn about the water cycle through watching it in a controlled environment (a terrarium) that will eventually allow them to observe the condensation, precipitation, and evaporation of moisture.

Thoreau: house-building, marrow-sucking, eduction-questioning, fact-fronting, deliberate-living

Grade Level:  High School

Physical Activity

Grade Level: High School

I meet twice weekly with our high school students for physical education.  One student suggested calling it "PA" instead of "PE" because our bi-weekly meetings center around being active together rather than "educating our bodies."  The "education" component of our PE comes from the students making goals and tracking their progress in logs.  However I love our "PA" sessions because they allow us to be enjoy our environment and our community in a healthy team-building way.

So far this year the students have: gone on a mushroom hike with a former forest service employee, hiked to Domke Lake (7 miles with a 1,100 foot elevation gain), practiced traversing and bouldering with an accomplished mountaineer who lives in our community, hiked the 10 Mile switchbacks, played basketball with a group of community members, and participated in a community-wide soccer game.

Physical Education: Syllabus

Grade Level:  High School

Physical Education: Individual Fitness

In "Individual Fitness" students will:

-Set at least one fitness goal for each quarter. 

-Discuss both their goal and their plans for achieving it with their instructor 

-Keep individual fitness journals, recording their daily physical activity

-Attend two to three PE classes per week

Matisse-inspired pastel drawings (with Picturelab Powerpoint)

"I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces in me."– Henri Matisse

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective:  Students will analyze the artwork of Matisse and experiment with color, emotion, line, and joyful artwork.

Materials:  Carnegie Picture Lab slideshow and lesson plan, oil pastels, drawing paper

Speaking in Place: Mapping Powerpoint

Grade Level:  High School

Speaking in Place: High School Environmental Literature

In my past life, I taught environmental literature to college students.  In my current job as a teaching assistant the opportunity has once again surfaced for me to work with older students, teaching a bi-weekly course on American environmental writers.  It's a work in progress but I'm very excited about the students, the readings, the course, and the content

From (our still in progress) Syllabus: 

Grade Level: 10/11

Speaking in Place:

The Environmental Language of the Here and Now

A lake, not far from where we live and learn

The American landscape has long played a role in American literature. This course will explore how writers both reflect and construct “place” in their texts. Students will encounter readings by a diverse group of writers including Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Annie Dillard.  “Classic” readings will often be paired with more contemporary pieces and students will be encouraged to grapple with questions raised by both wilderness and urban environments and the problems of class, privilege, and race that transpire in the canon of American environmental literature.

This course will not only require analysis of American environmental literature—it will also push students to use those same analytic skills to examine their own ideas about environment, landscape, and home.

Owl Pellets

Wednesday, September 25:

“If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going.” ― Wendell Berry

Grade Level: 2

Materials:  Owl Moon by Jane Yolen, Owl Zoobook, owl pellet, owl bone diagram, owl information packet and pellet kit, wooden tools, toothpicks

Objective: Student will learn about owls and their adaptations through fiction, nonfiction, and owl pellet exploration.

Introduction/Hook: Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Autumnal Equinox

“What I stand for is what I stand on.” ― Wendell Berry

Equinox egg-periment

Monday, September 23:
introduction to the planets, autumnal equinox, egg experiment, fall art
(Sources: National Geographic Education: The Reasons for the Seasons, National Geographic video: Equinox, National Geographic Kids: Eggs-periment, Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System)

Grade Level: Elementary

Materials:
Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System, construction paper, flashlight, globe, egg, salt, National Geographic video: Equinox, collage materials)

Objective: Students will begin to understand the seasons and the role the equinoxes plays in the lunar year.  

Class introduction/hook:  Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System, Flashlight demonstration

Desert Solitaire and Friday afternoon environmental literature

“A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.” ― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Reptile Slideshow: Characteristics, Myths and Facts, and Snake Species of WA

Grade Level: Elementary

Watercolor painting, stone fly observing

Wildlife expert Gus Becker comes in to talk about bears of the North Cascades

Black Bear skull (left), Grizzly skull (right)

Reptile Guest

A friend came and visited our class with a Northern Alligator lizard she found at a construction site near our school.  

Discovery Hike

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will become more aware of their senses and attuned to their surroundings.  Students will gain confidence in themselves and respect for their environment

When I worked as a naturalist, I taught a class called "Discovery Hike," that included a modified version of Joseph Cornell's "Silent Solo Hike."  In this version, two adults or teachers need to be present.  One adult (me, the naturalist) gets a head start (usually 3-5 minutes.)  He/she places cards on the trail which give the students instructions on how to interact with their environment (see below.)  The students are instructed to follow the path of cards silently and thoughtfully.  The second adult follows the group, picking up the cards as he or she goes.  The solo hike cards give students the opportunity to move through the forest in a more intentional way.  It's one of my favorite place-based environmental education activities.

September 18: Trees, Trees, Trees

"Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.” ― Wendell Berry

The setting where I work, live, and teach

Tuesday September 18:
tree identification, talking trees, dichotomous keys, leaf color experiment
(Sources: Once There Was a Tree by Natalia Romanova, Sharing Nature with Children by Joseph Cornell, Oregon State University Dichotomous Key, PBS Nature: What Plants Talk About (video clip))

Materials:
Once There Was a Tree by Natalia Romanova, lodge pile pine branch/cones, Oregon State University Dichotomous Key, PBS Nature: What Plants Talk About (video clip), backpack, radio, first aid kit, field guides

Objective:  Student will begin to understand more about the shapes, adaptations, life cycle and categorizations of trees, developing a greater sensitivity to the complicated ecosystem they inhabit.

Class introduction/hook:
Blind tree identification activity

September 17: Wild Worms

“I want my life to be a celebration of slowness...If we have open space then we have open time to breath, to dream, to dare, to play, to pray to move freely, so freely, in a world our minds have forgotten but our bodies remember."-Terry Tempest Williams, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

The garden compost bins, our place for worm scavenging

Monday, September 17:
earthworms and worm farms
(Sources:  My First Nature Book, How Earthworms Work, Camp Seymour "Wild Worms" Curriculum, Invasive Worms Video, Giant Earthworm Video)  

Materials: worms, soil, sand, mason jar, leaf litter, fruit, trowel, "earthworm" Powerpoint

Objective: Students will learn about worms who like fungi, act as decomposers.  Students will learn about worms, observe worms, and build a worm bin so they can continue to monitor their worms.

Class Introduction/Hook: Worm observation

Wild Worms Powerpoint Slides (without links/videos)

Grade Level: Elementary

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wassily Kandinsky: Abstract Expressionism for Second Graders

Monday, September 16: 

“If you painted a picture of your self, you would probably paint what you look like, the color of your eyes and hair, how tall/short you are, etc. But close your eyes for a minute and think about what you feel like. If you painted what you you feel like, it would be much different.”-Wassily Kandinsky

Kandisky inspired painting in-process

Grade Level:  Elementary

Objective:
Students will learn about abstract expressionism through visually analyzing the art of Wassily Kandinski. Students explore the relationship between music and visual art in a watercolor painting activity.

Materials:
Kandinsky Powerpoint, watercolor paint-set, water containers, watercolor paper, brushes, music, projector, laptop

Mushroom Walk (Led by Kristian)

Kristian, our community's resident mushroom guru and former forest service employee, took the second graders and the high school students on a mushroom walk today.

September 16: The Science of Baking Bread

"So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being." – Franz Kafka

Milling flour

Monday, September 16:  
yeast and bread baking
(Sources: The Little Red Hen (Project Gutenberg), Science in School: Bread-baking, teaching science in primary school, Homebaking.org: Second Grade: Science of Baking)

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective:
Students will learn more about fungi, yeast, and chemistry through baking bread.

Materials:
flour, salt, yeast, sugar, olive oil, warm water, baking tray or loaf tin, tea towel, measuring cup, mixing bowl, fork

Class Introduction/hook:
yeast review, flour grinding, and baking soda experiment.

September 12: Head, Thorax, Abdomen

“What other species now require of us is our attention.” ― Terry Tempest Williams, Finding Beauty in a Broken World

Thursday, September 12:
parts of an insect, checking bug traps, insect field guide exploration
(Sources: National Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Familiar Insects and Spiders, My First Nature Book, Insects Don't Bug Us web resource) 

Grade Level: 2

Objective:  Students will learn the parts an insect, gain observational skills, and begin to distinguish insects from other "bugs."

Materials: "Insect Costume", "Insects Don't Bug US" body diagram worksheet, plastic container, fruit, cork-board, rocks, and National Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Familiar Insects and Spiders, magnifying glass

Class introduction/hook: Insect dress up game, "Head, Thorax, Abdomen" song

September 9th-11th: Mushrooms, Yeast, Bug Traps, and Trees

"Observing expands your world; the more you see, hear, feel smell and taste, the more you will understand. You become attuned to the context of objects you previously thought of as isolated; you find they are connected to other objects and events."- Claire Walker Leslie, author of Keeping a Nature Journal

Observing animal behavior

Mule deer on the playground

Monday, September 9:

mushroom walk, sorting mushrooms, and making spore prints

Sources: The Fungus Files: An Educator's Guide (source: the North American Mycological Institute)

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will begin to learn about mushrooms/fungi/decomposers through guided exploration of their environment.

Materials: Fungus Files handouts, National Audubon Society Familiar Mushrooms Pocket Guide, Mushrooms of North America, an assortment of preselected wild mushrooms, construction paper, cups

Class introduction/hook: Mary Oliver poem (Mushrooms), mushroom walk

My background, my values, and my reasons for blogging

learning about marine life at a YMCA naturalist in-service training, fall 2011

I came to teaching because I love to learn.  I went from straight from my undergraduate studies at Valparaiso University to graduate school at Iowa State.  My MFA program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State emphasized not only the craft of writing but place, culture, geography, and ecology.  This interdisciplinary approach led several members of my program to co-develop a place-based composition class grounded in environmental literature and land stewardship.

Three years after completing my MFA I'm living in the Cascade Mountains, working at the most remote public school in the continental United States.  The school serves Holden Village, a community centered around a Lutheran wilderness retreat center built on the site of a former Copper Mine.  The community celebrates ecology, theology, hospitality, community, hilarity, and rest.  The school strives to "educate, equip, and empower students to be lifelong learners" (Holden School Mission Statement) and its instructors have a long history using place-based education and outdoor learning.

This year, I'm excited to be working on a regular basis with two precocious second graders, who I will call M & M (their chosen nicknames) for the purpose of protecting their privacy on this blog.  I hope to use Washington's state science standards as a guideline to develop a curriculum that will evoke their curiosity and engage them in questioning, creative thought.  I'm recording this curriculum online for our school, their families, for my own turnover file, for other educators curious about incorporating more place-based learning into their classroom.  I'm also writing for my own development.  I hope that by recording our work and reflecting on our days I can continue to evolve in my own pedagogical values.