Schoolyard Score Card

September 26, 2022 // by natureiscool

Schoolyard Report Card

Schoolyards are places for playing, socializing, exploring, and sharing the land with other living things. How would your schoolyard score if you gave it a report card?

The best schoolyards build health in many ways – healthy kids as well as a healthy environment. That means opportunities for active play, creative play, quiet reflection, social interaction and exploring the natural world. Many schools are beginning to see their schoolyard as a habitat – welcoming many plants and animals to share the space with the students. This also provides excellent opportunities for outdoor learning and building stewardship skills.

1. INTRODUCTORY VIDEO

Watch the video with your students to help you get started. It explores what we mean by a ‘habitat for people’ and a ‘habitat for wildlife.’ It showcases some projects from other schools to help get your ideas flowing!

These score sheets have grade-linked opportunities to explore your schoolyard using math, science and geography skills. Grades 3-6 will go out and measure the schoolyard and make maps of what they find. Grades 7-8 will begin by drawing their schoolyard from memory, then use satellite images to compare with their drawings, and create accurate basemaps.

Then, using the Score Sheets, students will evaluate their schoolyard on the basis of:

a) Habitat for People

b) Environmental Health

c) Habitat for Wildlife

Download the Schoolyard Score Card below to get started!

3. DISCUSSION AND FOLLOW-UP

How did your schoolyard score? Are there things that scored well? Are there opportunities for improvement? Can your class play a role in improving your schoolyard’s score?

The score cards provide suggestions on simple places to begin. Realizing that we can make positive changes in the world around us, and working together to do that, helps build hope, empowerment and leadership skills.

The Schoolyard Report Card is an activity that can build your classes’ Pathway Points and gives you an opportunity to win the monthly draw! Don’t forget to report what you’ve done on the Pathway website pathwayproject.ca

Become a Citizen Scientist

April 6, 2022 // by natureiscool

Citizen Science Workshop

This comprehensive set of resources provides excellent support for teachers exploring water quality and aquatic ecosystems with intermediate-level classes. The workshop also introduces Pathway Landmark 22: ‘Become a Citizen Scientist by helping to monitor environmental health,’ which is geared to Grade 7-8 classes. The workshop is a partnership between Otonabee Conservation and the Pathway Project.

Ontario Curriculum Links:

Grade 7: Understanding Life Systems - Interactions in the Environment

Overall Expectations: 1. Assess the impacts of human activities and technologies on the environment, and evaluate ways of controlling these impacts; 2. Investigate interactions within the environment, and identify factors that affect the balance between different components of an ecosystem; 3. Demonstrate an understanding of interactions between and among biotic and abiotic elements in the environment

Grade 8: Understanding Earth and Space Systems - Water Systems

Overall Expectations: 1. Assess the impact of human activities and technologies on the sustainability of water resources; 2. Investigate factors that affect local water quality; 3. Demonstrate an understanding of the earth’s water systems and the influence of water systems on a specific region

Workshop Components:

1. Introductory Video: This 20-minute video, produced by Otonabee Conservation, introduces the Otonabee region watershed and provides an overview of chemical and biological methods used locally to monitor watershed health. This can be used as a stand-alone activity or an introduction to hands-on monitoring opportunities for students.

2. Worksheets: Depending on the equipment you have available and your access to nearby waterways, the following worksheets have been prepared by Otonabee Conservation to guide students through a variety of activities to learn about their watershed and monitor its health:

French Language Worksheets

3. Lesson Plans: These comprehensive lesson plans were developed by teacher and Outdoor Educator Sherri Owen to guide you through aquatic field labs with your class.

FIELD LAB 1: WATER CHEMISTRY

This guide outlines safety considerations as well as protocols for water collection and testing. It includes tracking and assessment sheets and identifies where you can find testing tools and supplies.

Finally, we show you how to submit your data to Water Rangers, a Canadian organization accepting water quality data from citizen scientists like you.

Thanks to Water Rangers for contributing a Water Rangers Testing Kit to the Pathway Project. To borrow our kit, email Cathy at cathy@pathwayproject.ca

FIELD LAB 2: BIOLOGICAL INDICATORS

This guide provides everything you need to catch and identify benthic bugs, calculate water quality ratings, and create a water quality statement.

You’ll also get two worksheet protocols for evaluating water quality using aquatic macroinvertebrates.

This field lab explains how to submit your data to the Leaf Pack Network Database.

Wet and Wonderful – A Mud Puddle-and-Pie Activity Guide

April 23, 2019 // by Karen O'Krafka

Wet and Wonderful – a Mud Puddle-and-Pie Activity Guide

The season of wet-and-muddy is upon us, and with it, an opportunity to embrace all manners of sensory play, mud-puddle math, nature art and interdisciplinary integration! Have boots? Will play!

Mud-puddle math:

Mud puddles provide endless hours of sensory fun, and an incredible opportunity for authentic learning!

How deep is the water? How much water is in a really big puddle? What could it fill? A bucket? A bathtub? How could we even measure it?!

In her blog Puddle Play – Rethinking the ‘Math Classroom’, Deanna Pecaski McLennan, PhD, elaborates the “measurement, counting, capacity, classification, time and quantity” that can all be explored authentically in a puddle. This is rich learning where play and adaptive reasoning intersect.

Math can happen anywhere, and outdoors doing something most children love is the perfect place!

Tool tips? Try:

Turkey basters That turkey baster that only gets used twice yearly?! An incredible (and FUN) instrument of transfer and measurement: squirting distance, volume transfer – comparing between one container and another.
Measuring cups
Funnels

More math and measurement?! Try Mud Kitchens!

Mud Kitchen:

Cooking up delicious “recipes” in a mud kitchen requires only a few second-hand kitchen implements like muffin tins, metal bowls, collanders and spoons. This can be on-the-ground immersive play or hands-in-a-sandbox in a wood or brick enclosure (pictured below). Second-hand stores are inexpensive sources for utensils, and places like the Re-store offer inexpensive sinks and accessories for more elaborate builds!

Math