Teresa

For this I think it is best to prime the class with expectations and your ultimate goal. Provide examples of other simple projects completed. Then, take a nature walk with a scavenger hunt specific to your topic. After the class has been primed with an overview of info and some hands on activities (requiring knowledge about the topic), then make an I Wonder board (if you weren't doing it all along). I think this would get the ideas going.

You give them something worth observing. Jessifer mentioned that by just taking kids outside, they have a natural tendency to make observations. My ideas are taking my students (with sticky notes) on a walk through our nature preserve and asking open ended questions about the environment to get things going. Or taking them into our garden and doing the same. There is also a park we could visit. In any case, the great outdoors provides a feast for kids to abserve and wonder.

I appreciate the emphasis of a child not being an assistant, but an actual scientist. I love how this can change the perspective of the learner and create meaning, responsibility, and significance to their role. To incorporate this practice, I plan to inform them from the beginning that they are not helpers or assistants, but scientists in my class. I will give the learner control and time to process this role and explain to them what it means to be a scientist. I plan to explore the significance of this role and also engage in discussion with the learners what they believe it means. I will also have to change my perspective of the learners act as a facilitator/helper while they are on this learning experience.

I work with grades 2-12 in an all outdoor program. One of my lessons discussed hurricane Katrina and levees. After discussing hurricane Katrina and the failure of levees that contributed to absolute devastation, I challenged my 4-6 graders to be engineers and develop a levee with materials that had to be purchased with a limited amount of mad money provided to them. Students were instructed to develop a design, determine materials needed, construct the design, and then test its effectiveness. The team with the best levee won. This level of inquiry is Open Inquiry, I believe. Science practices somewhat used were Asking Questions and Defining Problems and Engaging in Argument from Evidence. This was a really fun lesson but it definitely could have been better. I would need more time for this lesson than I had originally but I think it would have been cool to bring some small structures symbolizing houses or buildings. Place the structures on the ground, in an open space (remember we are an all outdoor program and gave 9 acres to work with) and inform the students that the structures are a city that is below sea level. How do we protect it from hurricanes and flooding? With this type of activity and with the student’s age group I would keep this activity Open Inquiry. We would develop a question, analyze solutions, determine materials needed (I would bring various materials from the dollar store and allow kids to use natural materials around the school), design a model, execute plan, and then test it. Once we tested our structure we would analyze our data. We could also compare each team’s structure and see who’s structure held up the best in protecting the city from water. The final part would be developing solutions to problems encountered and trying the experiment again. I believe all practices could be applied to this lesson, but for the students I would with, the following practices would currently be appropriate and doable: Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering) Developing and using models Planning and carrying out investigations Analyzing and interpreting data Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering) Engaging in argument from evidence

I love watching bird feeders and watching birds soaring on a wind current we have in the evenings in our backyard. I love discovering wild plants you can eat.

When I was 2 or 3 years old I was babysat by out neighbor 1x per week. At the end of the day my babysitter would take me outside under her huge walnut tree and we would sit together and feed the scrubjays walnuts. That is one of my favorite memories.