by editor | Jan 2, 2010 | K-12 Classroom Resources, Marine/Aquatic Education
What causes ocean currents? What impact do they have on Earth’s environment? How have they influenced human history?
This teaching guide for grades 5-8 provides 7 activities for students to explore the causes and impacts of ocean tides and gain an understanding of the influences of wind, temperature, salinity and density on ocean movement.
Students are given the opportunity to explore such real-world situations as the 1990 Nike shoe spill, the raft Kon Tiki, and other oceanic voyages in history.
From Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS). ISBN 0-924886-44-7. $21.00. Order online at www.lhsgems.org.
by editor | Dec 15, 2009 | Indigenous Peoples & Traditional Ecological Knowledge, K-12 Classroom Resources
-From EETAP Resource Library, prepared by Joe E. Heimlich, Ph.D and Sabiha S. Daudi, GRA. April 1996
One of the major goals of environmental education is to prepare a citizenry capable of making informed choices and able to address its environmental concerns through positive actions. One way to achieve this is by encouraging sharing of knowledge and exchange of experiences between different cultures.
Many cultures, rich in traditional wisdom, indigenous knowledge and notions about sustainable uses of natural resources coexist in the United States. These diversified groups have one characteristic in common — a desire to live in harmony with nature. The natural resources are considered a gift by these indigenous cultures and are used with respect. This inculcates a responsible behavior towards managing natural resources.
Since the long term goal of environmental education is to change behaviors so that waste of natural resources can be prevented, it is important to share and exchange information as well as learn from the teachings of these indigenous cultures, namely Native Americans.
ALERT: You need to subscribe to CLEARING to read the rest of this article.
(Sign up using the form provided. A password will be sent to your e-mail address.)
[password]
Another implicit goal in much of environmental education is to allow the learner to discover the world — not only around them, but also in other parts of the globe and in other cultures both nearby and distant. Thus, educators can find value in resources that explore and appreciate the different ways in which various cultures view and understand the human relationship to the earth.
To achieve these goals, educators of formal and non-formal environmental education need to have ready access to resources that provide background and historical information for understanding the Native American influence on conservation and conveying environmental ehtics learned from these indigenous cultures to the students. Following is a list of resources, in the form of books, video films and articles that give a broad view of the indigenous cultures of the Native Americans.
Print Resources
from Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) and Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC).
Coates, Ned. “Teaching about American Indians.” Nature Study, v 46 (March 1994): p 3-4 (EJ 487 001)
Presents aspects of American Indian culture that the environmental education teacher should understand when teaching ecology in a Native American context.
Quinn, W.J. “Native American Hunting Traditions as a Basis for Outdoor Education.” Journal of Outdoor Education, v26, p12-18, 1992093 (EJ 467 628)
Discusses Native American hunting prractices and beliefs applicable to an outdoor education curriculum, focusing on respect and reverence for the earth, animals, and the natural world. Suggests that Native hunting rationales could form a philosophical foundation for environmental education and outdoor education programs.
Cajete, G. Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education. U.S.: Colorado, 1994 (ED 375 993)
Explores the nature of indigenous education outlining key elements of American Indians perspectives on learning and teaching. Chapters exp.ore the spiritual, environmental, mythic, visionary, artistic, affective and communal foundations of indigenous education.
Gough, N., Kesson, K. Boddy and Narrative as Cultural Text: Towards a Curriculum of Continuity and Connection. Australia: Victoria 1992 (ED 347 544)
Suggests that deconstructing the modern metaphors of nature cultivated by modern science and industrialism is the first step towards reconstructing a relationship with the earth. Environmental educators can learn much from the narrative strategies of pre-modern cultures like Australian Aborigines and Native Americans about the assimilation of language to the world.
Barreiro, J. “The Search for Lessons”. Akwe:kon Journal, v9, no2 (Summer 1992) p18-39 (EJ 460 200)
Contrasts the expropriations and misrepresentation of Indian beliefs by “New Age” gurus with the respectful application of indigenous values to environmental ethics. Discusses indigenous models of ecosystemic adaptation in North and south America, the convergence of conservation efforts and Indian land rights, and issues in Native community-based development.
Completing the cycle -it’s up to you: responsibility for the environment. Indian Dept. of Education. 1993 (ENC- 000 099)
This instructional module has activities designed to provide students with a variety of concrete ways to study the relationships between behaviors and consequences. Hands-on activities focus on development of many content areas such as language arts, social studies, mathematics, science, fine arts, and health. Investigations also look at how the people, events, and decisions of the past influence the present and future by examining Native Americans, pioneers, and people of today.
Project Willow: understanding Native American culture through environmental education. Develooped through a partnership between the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California and schools districts in Nevada and California. 1995 (ENC 002-744)
Ecological concepts such as resources, carrying capacity, competitions, niches, habitats, ecosystems, food webs, home range, flow of energy, and ecological change are highlighted. The effect of Euro American settlement on Washoe lands along with how the loss of traditional lands has had a profound effect on Washoe people are examined.
The Mohawk Legacy: a matter of survival [videotapes]. Project Future, Potsdam College of the State University of New York. 1992 (ENC 000-231)
Produced by the Indians themselves, the video is designed to be a teaching tool for middle school curricula related to biology, environmental studies, technology, culture or history. After discussing the Akwesasne cultural and historical settings, a Mohawk artist and story teller talks about the creation story, Mohawk tradition, symbolism, and their matrilineal social structure.
The Restless Earth [videotape]. Cardias Production Inc., Chicago IL 1993 (ENC 001 188)
This series of videos focuses on the research of several new explorers who are on the cutting edge of scientific discovery, extending the frontiers of science, nature, and environmental conservation.
-From EETAP Resource Library, prepared by Joe E. Heimlich, Ph.D and Sabiha S. Daudi, GRA. April 1996
[/password]
by editor | Dec 9, 2009 | K-12 Classroom Resources
Reviews by Patricia Richwine, Ph.D.
As we, optimistically, raked the last leaves from our yard and started to prepare for winter, we brought the wrought iron plant hanger, which had until just recently held a flowering basket, closer to the house where we could hang our feeder and watch an assortment of birds that live in or near our back yard in the winter. Almost immediately the birds returned. A little hesitant at first but then with more confidence they came. The mourning doves, among the ground feeders, were not even frightened away by a couple of pesky squirrels. I keep a pair of binoculars by the kitchen window for, if you will, a birds-eye view of the feeder and of all the species it attracts.
As usual, I wondered just what kinds of birds there were flying back and forth in a feeding frenzy several times a day. That led me to a few new field guides and bird books, written for children or other beginning ornithologists. Perhaps you’ll want to add these to your collection or at least place one by the binoculars at your kitchen window. (more…)
by editor | Jun 26, 2009 | K-12 Classroom Resources, Place-based Education, Service learning
Citizens for a Healthy Bay’s Junior Bay Ranger Program
By Katrina Landau
In 2003, the Washington State Legislature passed ESHB 1466 that established the Natural Science, Wildlife and Environmental Education Partnership Grant program under the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). In the 2005-2006 inaugural year, Citizens for a Healthy Bay (CHB), a Tacoma based 501c3 organization, was one of the recipients.
This innovative partnership was created to promote “proven and innovative natural science, wildlife and environmental education programs that include instruction about renewable resources, responsible use of resources and conservation.” (more…)
by editor | Jun 8, 2009 | K-12 Classroom Resources
Teaching Children about the Environment with Picture Books
By
Daniel A. Kriesberg
Illustrated by
Dorothy Frederick
Reviewed by
Dr. Suzanne Spradling
A Sense of Place is a valuable classroom resource and curricular supplement. This book is designed to help integrate children’s literature and hand-on activities to increase students’ awareness of their connections to the earth. The activities and literature suggestions fit readily into existing curricula in the core content areas. The author describes how place-based environmental education can be used to meet state and national education standards. The topics addressed in the book develop students’ geographical and scientific observation skills and provide opportunities for them to learn about their area’s ecology and history. The chapters also include a variety of environmental education activities, language arts projects, and activities that integrate math and art.
(more…)
by editor | Apr 21, 2009 | K-12 Classroom Resources, Place-based Education
By Shamu Fenyvesi Sadeh
Portland State University, Center for Learning and Teaching West (NSF)
If students were asked to define “environment” and “community” what would they come up with? What would it look like if students designed their own methods for investigating community environmental issues? What would it mean if the teacher encouraged students to make connections between what they know about their neighborhood and scientific concepts such as diesel particulate pollution and carcinogens?
These are the central questions guiding a collaborative research and teaching project between an eighth-grade science teacher in a Northeast Portland middle school and myself, a long-time environmental educator turned doctoral student.
Our goal is to empower students to make connections between personal knowledge and environmental learning in ways that promote participation and learning in science class. To be responsive to the students’ interests and to facilitate our own continual learning, we use the model of action research – a spiral process of planning, implementation, evaluation and re-planning. The general approach of our plan-as-we-go curriculum is to get students involved in learning about and acting on community environmental issues of their choosing.
ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article.
(enter password then hit return button on your keyboard for best results)
[password]
Community-based or place-based programs share our emphasis on the local context but few programs that we have read or heard about turn power in the classroom over to the students. In my first years of teaching environmental education I spent a lot of energy trying to get the students to understand and adopt my (enlightened) environmental perspective and absorb my (considerable) scientific expertise. Historically much of the environmental education curriculum and research does the same: it focuses on either 1) carefully planned and tested activities designed to encourage the adoption of environmentally friendly behaviors that are pre-determined by the teachers and researchers, or 2) packaged units on environmental knowledge designed to be easily fed to the cooperative (but passive) student.
It was working with Native American, poor European American and African American students that helped me to shift towards student-centered learning. Approaching urban and minority students with my standard nature-as-wilderness bag of tricks was simply not working. Slowly, I began to do more listening than talking and to adapt my teaching to the particular needs and interests of the students and their communities. Now I know that to make environmental and scientific fields more diverse and to teach effectively to underserved populations I have to drop my agenda and listen to theirs. Particularly for populations such as urban, low-income African American and Latino students, who historically have not had a voice in scientific and environmental fields, honoring student knowledge and empowering student decision-making in the curriculum is crucial.
The Community Environmental Health Project at Columbia Middle School
In our work with low-income African American, Latino, Asian and European American middle school students, the collaborating teacher and I have worked hard to put the students’ perspectives at the center of the classroom. For example, when we began this fall by asking students about environmental issues in their community we got a lot of confused looks and blank stares. We decided we needed to take a few steps back and have the students define the concepts we were using. We decided to start using the words like “neighborhood”, “community” and “health”, rather than just “environment”, because we found that those words made sense to the students.
The discussion on “What is Community to You” was one of several that delved into students’ intense curiosity about race and poverty. Why is it as one student, Devon, observed “On this block we got Mexicans, on this block white, on this block white.” Why is the majority of industry located in minority neighborhoods? These were some of the liveliest conversations we have had in class this year. Few off-the-shelf environmental education curricula, even community-based programs, address race or class. Yet we found that culture, race and class are central to the students’ experience of community issues and are, of course, central elements in the field of environmental justice.
As a way of generating excitement on an issue close to the student’s experience, we read an article on the building that housed our school just four years ago. Many students in the class had older brothers and sisters, cousins or even parents who had attended school in the old building. The article describes how the building was contaminated with high levels of radon and toxic mold for many years. However, most shocking were three facts in the article: 1) radon exposure causes severe headaches and a lowering of cognitive abilities, 2) students at this school had the lowest test scores and among the lowest attendance rates in the entire state, and 3) some school officials knew for many years about the radon contamination and did nothing, despite repeated complaints by students, parents and teachers.
Many of the students were shocked and some, angry. One student, Sara, wrote in response to the article “If they knew about it for so long, how come they didn’t tell nobody or do anything?” The article showed students that there are important environmental issues affecting their community, introduced the concept of environmental justice, and in the words of the teacher, “got them riled up!”
After helping students to find their homes on city maps, we decided to engage in some neighborhood investigations at a scale that makes sense to the students: three block surrounding their house, apartment or trailer. From their observations, and from surveys the students designed and conducted in their neighborhoods, we generated a list of community issues. Homelessness, violence and graffiti were frequently raised together with more traditional environmental justice issues such as air pollution and asthma. Each class of students voted on an issue to investigate further and to take action on. Three classes chose air pollution and asthma and one class chose homelessness. Although homelessness and graffiti do not appear in scientific accounts of environmental problems, nor are they topics usually studied in science class, we decided to include them on the “community issues ballot” because they reflect student and community interest. If we want a science and environmental education that reflects the full diversity of our society, than we must expand the boundaries of “science” and “the environment.”
Other activities we have done as part of the community environmental health project include: writing a scientific autobiography, conducting community surveys, dialoguing with guest speakers, taking field trips, watching a video on pollution issues in a San Francisco neighborhood made by middle school students, conducting a lichen (as air quality indicators) survey, and making presentations to 6th and 2nd graders.
Challenges
Accomodating the time demands of this way of teaching and learning is not easy. Since the students design their own assignments and choose projects to work on, the teacher and I cannot plan the curriculum in advance. Additionally, our community investigations involve lots of reading and group work that demand lots of class time and need to be balanced with other 8th grade science units. Moving from teaching as telling to teaching as finding out requires a huge shift in thinking that posed a challenge to both the teacher and myself. This shift involves letting go of control and expertise and leaving room for mistakes and uncertainty. From my experience in environmental and science education, it is the path that all of us, whether college professors, nature center naturalists, or middle school teachers need to take.
A Little of What Have We Learned
Although we are still deep in data analysis, evaluation and reflection, a few patterns and lessons have emerged from the last year.
The Community Environmental Health Project is seen by some students as exciting and “real” compared to the usual school work of “sit and listen”, “facts” and “books”.
Many students who were typically unmotivated by science class emerged as energetic and vocal participants in the community environmental health project.
Many students were able to make personal connections to science through observations they made in their daily lives, conversations with neighbors and family, concerns about justice, and feelings of compassion for those suffering from asthma, cancer, lead poisoning, or homelessness.
Students showed understanding of concepts such as: the health effects of environmental toxins, using lichen as air quality indicators, environmental justice, mapping, community activist resources, and the effects of personal choices on environmental health.
Students’ comments and participation in extracurricular activities related to the project (producing a youth radio show for local community radio) demonstrate the empowerment many students feel being part of the project.
When a normally shy student proclaims “I want to know what it is like to be a homeless person,” and another confides to me that she likes studying air pollution because “my friend has asthma and I can cure her,” and a third tells me “So now that I see these things around me, all this air pollution, I know what to name it cause before I didn’t really pay attention to it,” we feel good about the work we have done.
(Names of the school and students have been changed)
[/password]
