Taking STEM Outside: WILD Project-based Learning in Your Schoolyard

June 24 & 25, 2015 (100% attendance is required for credit.)
8:00 AM - 4:30 PM
Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden (909 Robert D. Ray Drive, Des Moines)

Learn how to take STEM outdoors. Spend two days turning outdoor projects and exploration into project-based learning units specifically geared for your teaching situation. We will demonstrate how to bundle your favorite Project WILD and Aquatic WILD activities with field investigations to foster inquiry-based learning and meet local and state learning standards. Much of this “flipped” professional development will be spent creating your own path through a host of nationally developed and tested resources to engage your students in authentic inquiry through modeling, discussion, and practice using your school yard or a local natural area and your classes as the framework.

Participants are encouraged to bring information about their school site or a nearby natural area for use with workshop activities. Teaching partners/groups are encouraged to facilitate planning/implementation of projects.

Registration deadline is June 17, 2015 - you must register electronically. Registration fee: $75 (includes lunches, materials, and 1 license renewal credit); or $150 (includes lunches, materials, and 1 EDEX graduate credit)

For more information, contact: Barb.Gigar@dnr.iowa.gov; 515-494-3891.

Spring Themed Nature Games

Keep your students active this spring with these fun spring themed games.

Robin’s Egg

Select 1 student to be the robin. Have the robin sit with his/her back to the other students, at least ten feet away. Place a plastic egg behind the robin. The robin needs to protect the egg. The remaining students take turns sneaking up behind the robin and try to steal the egg. If the robin hears the person sneaking up, he/she will “call” and then turn around. If the robin catches a student, that student becomes the new robin. If there is no student when the robin “calls,” the robin remains the robin and the game starts again.

Flower Power

Students pretend to be pollinators traveling from flower to flower. Scatter hula hoops across the play area (fewer hula hoops than students). Place a card with a shape inside each hula hoop (flower). Give each student a card with a shape. Students must travel around the play area, matching their card to one inside a flower. When they find a match, they stand inside the flower. Only one student can be inside each flower. If a student doesn’t “pollinate” a flower, they are out. Remove a flower (hula hoop) after each round.

Metamorphosis Relay

Students are butterflies racing through their various life stages. Divide students into two teams. Students begin the race in a curled up position to represent an egg.

Station 1 – the caterpillar: students wiggle through a maze, searching for food
Station 2 – the chrysalis: students climb into a burlap sack and race to the next station
Station 3 – the adult caterpillar: students grab a colorful scarf and “flies” to the finish line

Plant a Tree Relay

Students race to complete the task of planting a tree.

Station 1 – dig the hole: students put on a straw hat and perform 5 squats

 

Station 2 – plant the tree: students put on a pair of work gloves and perform 5 jumping jacks

Station 3 – move mulch: students put a small trash can on a scooter and push it to the next
station; if the trash can falls off, they must go back and try again

Station 4 – water the tree: students pick up a jumping rope (represents water hose) and must jump rope to the finish line

Watch it Grow!

Plant flowers, a tree, or a garden. There are plenty of jobs to keep everyone active: digging holes, planting the tree/flowers, moving mulch, carrying water pails. Encourage parents and local community members to join in on the fun. Students will have fun watching their plants/trees change through the seasons.

Gardening Obstacle Course

You need a large outside play area. For older kids, have two teams race against each other.

Obstacle 1 – carry 3 (numbers can be adjusted to age of students) bags of dirt to 3 marked planting sites

 

Obstacle 2 – load 3 (numbers can be adjusted to age of students) bags of mulch into a wheel barrow

 

Obstacle 3 – push loaded wheel barrow through curvy path (for added challenge, include a hill)

Obstacle 4 – unload the bags of mulch

Obstacle 5 – load wagon with produce

Obstacle 6 – push wagon to produce stand

Obstacle 7 – unload produce

Obstacle 8 – climb the fence (stack of hay bales) – finish line

Build a Nest

Students are robins building their nests. Divide the students into two relay teams. Each team stands single file behind the starting line. Place 2 buckets of wet mud (1 for each team) and the end of the course. Place 2 small containers (1 for each team) at the starting line. Give each student a plastic spoon.

The first student “flies” to the bucket of mud, scoops up a spoonful of mud, flies back to the starting line, and empties their spoon of mud into the container (nest). Continue until all students have helped build the nest.

Dig a Hole

Divide students into teams. Place a bucket of soil and 10 plastic cups in front of each line. Place an empty bucket at the end of the line. The first student in each line fills a cup with soil and passes it to the student behind them. Students continue passing the cup until it reaches the last student. The last student empties the cup into the bucket. Continue until all the dirt has been transferred.

Classroom Phenology Notebook

“Many of the events of the annual cycle recur year after year in a regular order. A year-to-year record of this order is a record of the rates at which solar energy flows to and through living things. They are the arteries of the land. By tracing their response to the sun, phenology may eventually shed some light on that ultimate enigma, the land’s inner workings.” –Aldo Leopold, A Phenological Record for Sauk and Dane Counties, Wisconsin, 1935-1945

Phenology is the study of the timing of life cycle events and their relationship to the environment (e.g., leaves changing color in the fall, birds migrating in the spring and fall, butterflies emerging from their

Chrysalis). It tells scientists when events such as bird migration are happening on their usual schedule—and when an event might be out of time or place, especially in relation to the climate and change of seasons.

Phenologists observe and take notes on these events to try to discover nature’s patterns and rhythms. One famous phenologist, Aldo Leopold, kept records of wild animal and plant life on his Wisconsin farm from 1935-1948. His daughter, Nina Leopold Bradley, continued to carry on her father’s work, compiling a robust database spanning from 1976 until her death in 2011. She found that a substantial number of phenological events occurred much earlier in her data than they did in her father's.

Create a classroom phenology notebook to track the natural patterns of plants and animals at your school. Fill a three-ring binder with notebook paper and add dividers for each month. Record seasonal changes your students observe while outside throughout the year – sunrise/sunset times, hours of sunlight, temperature, changes in tree leaves and plants, animals you see and what they are doing.

Helpful Websites

Nature’s Notebook
Classroom Phenology: Using the Environment as a Source of Data and Observations

The Phenology Handbook

Phenology: Observing the Seasonal Timing of Life Cycle Events
Phenology Garden Teacher’s Manual: An introduction to teaching, observing and recording phenology

Teaching Environmental Sustainability - Model My Watershed

The Concord Consortium, the Stroud Water Research Center, and Heartland AEA are pleased to announce the Teaching Environmental Sustainability-Model My Watershed (TES-MMW) workshop, a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Participants and their students will use free portal-based activities that employ maps and models to study their own school’s watershed; teachers will participate in two summer face-to-face workshops and two online courses. TES-MMW activities support NGSS and Math Common Core. Teachers will receive a stipend for participating. 

This program is for Iowa middle and high school science teachers whose curriculum includes watershed studies, and who are willing and available to participate in all TES-MMW workshop and online activities that include:

• 3 day workshop in Johnston, IA, July 28-30, 2015 (travel and housing reimbursed by grant).
•  2015-16 academic year: 2 online courses for teachers; 6 class periods of activities with your students.
•  2 day workshop in Lawrence, KS, last week of July 2016 (dates TBD; travel and housing reimbursed).
• Completion of all research activities required for NSF funding (see consent form, pp. 2-3)

Applications are due May 1, 2015. For more information contact Rob Kleinow at rkleinow@heartlandaea.org.

Project WILD Field Test

The Council for Environmental Education (CEE), the national office for Project WILD, invites K-12 educators (formal and nonformal) to help field test activities being considered for publication in future editions of the Project WILD K-12 Curriculum & Activity Guide.
Please complete the application survey (by April 3) if you would like to try out one or more activities with your students and then provide CEE with feedback - $40 stipends are available for participating. CEE will notify those selected to participate on April 10, 2015.

Activities typically require two 45 minute class sessions or the equivalent instructional time, and may also involve investigating outdoor areas, such as a school yard or park. Although you are welcome and encouraged to field test more than one activity, and to conduct a single activity with more than one class, only one $40 stipend will be provided to each participating educator. Results will be due to CEE via the Field Test Results Survey no later than Friday, June 5, 2015. Stipends will be mailed beginning on Friday, June 12, 2015.

Get wild with National Wildlife Week March 9-15

Celebrate this wild week with us by learning about Iowa’s wildlife! This week we will share cool Iowa wildlife facts,classroom activities, and MORE! Get out, get wild and have fun!

Cool Things to Know About Hawks

Identifying Iowa's Raptors fact sheet

Of Iowa’s regularly nesting daytime raptors, five of these are considered to be hawks: the red-tailed hawk, northern harrier (marsh hawk), red-shouldered hawk, Cooper’s hawk and broad-winged hawk. There’s also the rough-legged hawk, the most common non-nesting hawk species in Iowa, which you can find hunting for small rodents in Iowa grasslands over the winter. There’s also the sharp-shinned and Swaison’s hawk, which can be found in Iowa, but are not regular nesters here.

Not all hawks are created equal.
The red-tailed is the most common hawk in Iowa – in fact, a few years ago two Iowa biologists identified 23 active red-tailed nests in trees along Interstate 35 from Ames to the Missouri border. However, the northern harrier, which nests on the ground in large grasslands, is on Iowa’s endangered species list. The red-shouldered hawk is threatened in Iowa, nesting primarily in bottomland forests. All hawks, not just threatened and endangered species, are protected in Iowa.

Hawks on the rise.
Once on the threatened list in Iowa, the Cooper’s hawk is now a common nesting species and a frequent visitor to urban backyards. Cooper’s hawks are fond of birdfeeders in those yards – but not for the birdseed, making for an easy meal as songbirds line up for the seed buffet. The similarities between Cooper’s hawks and sharp-shinned hawks can sometimes make identification difficult.

They all have different tastes.
Habitat needs vary for all of Iowa’s hawk species, from the northern harrier in grasslands and Swainson’s hawk in the savannas of northern and western Iowa. Even the forest dwellers have their own turf; red-shouldered hawks prefer bottomland forests, sharp-shinned hawks take to pine forests and broad-winged hawks look for trees in large forests.

They’re not the downfall of the pheasant.
While hawks and other predators may take small game, as they always have, harsh winters, wet springs and lack of habitat continue to have the largest impacts on Iowa's pheasants. Predator populations as reported by Iowa bowhunters have remained stable since 2007, but the combination of bad weather and fewer habitats likely makes what predators are around more efficient. Hawks will also eat smaller birds, snakes, reptiles, mice, fish and sometimes insects.

The better to see you with.
While hawks have remarkable hearing, their eyesight is incredible. They can see great distances and have the ability to see things 8 times clearer than humans, and all in color. And since hawks can see ultraviolet colors, they can actually see more colors than humans.

Keeping it all in the family.
While larger hawks, like the red-tailed, lay one or two eggs each year , most smaller Iowa species lay three to five, which incubate for about six weeks. It’s usually the same mom and dad year after year, but while hawks generally mate for life, that doesn’t mean that they all stay together all the time. Some hawk couples part ways after the kids are out of the nest and meet back up in the same nesting territory the next year. If one mate dies, the other usually finds a new partner soon after.

 

 

 

Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching

The Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching are the highest honors bestowed by the United States Government specifically for K-12 mathematics and science teaching. Awardees serve as models for their colleagues, inspiration to their communities, and leaders in the improvement of mathematics and science education.

Since 1983, more than 4,300 teachers have been recognized for their contributions to mathematics and science education. Up to 108 teachers are recognized each year.

Presidential Awardees receive a citation signed by the President of the United States, a trip for two to Washington, D.C. to attend a series of recognition events and professional development opportunities, and a $10,000 award from the National Science Foundation.

Who can nominate?

Anyone—principals, teachers, parents, students, or members of the general public—may nominate exceptional mathematics and science (including computer science) teachers. Nominations close April 1, 2015.

Who can apply?

Secondary school teachers (7th – 12th grades) can apply this year. Elementary school mathematics and science teachers (K – 6th) are eligible to apply during the 2015-2016 school year. Applications must be completed by May 1, 2015.

To nominate or apply, visit: http://www.paemst.org