Teachers and families across the country are facing a new reality of providing opportunities for students to do science through distance and home learning. The Daily Do is one of the ways NSTA is supporting teachers and families with this endeavor. Each weekday, NSTA will share a sensemaking task teachers and families can use to engage their students in authentic, relevant science learning. We encourage families to make time for family science learning (science is a social process!) and are dedicated to helping students and their families find balance between learning science and the day-to-day responsibilities they have to stay healthy and safe.

Interested in learning about other ways NSTA is supporting teachers and families? Visit the NSTA homepage.

Sensemaking is actively trying to figure out how the world works (science) or how to design solutions to problems (engineering). Students do science and engineering through the science and engineering practices. Engaging in these practices necessitates that students be part of a learning community to be able to share ideas, evaluate competing ideas, give and receive critique, and reach consensus. Whether this community of learners is made up of classmates or family members, students and adults build and refine science and engineering knowledge together.

Spring is here! The month of April holds two days dedicated to the environment—Earth Day (April 22) and Arbor Day (April 24)—that traditionally encourage students and their families to get outside and become more familiar with their local environment.

In today's task, What can I observe in the outdoors?, students and their families look more closely at their local green spaces by describing the rocks, soil, moving water, plants, and animals found there. Noticing the parts (components) of these green spaces (systems) using science and engineering practices and the thinking tools of systems and stability and change (crosscutting concepts) is the first step in understanding how these parts interact in an ecosystem. This task is based on the chapter "Exploring Your Environment" from the book Teaching Science Through Trade Books, published by NSTA Press.

Note: Teachers and families should follow all national, state, and/or local guidelines for being outdoors. If this task will be used in a classroom setting, teachers should check their district's policies on taking students outside during the school day before heading outdoors.

Using children’s picture books is a great way to engage students in science learning because they create opportunities for students to share and build on their ideas and ask questions they can investigate at home and school. These investigations may raise new questions. As their curiosity about a subject grows, students are likely to want to read more (and more!) books, thus starting the process over again.

Watch the video above to learn more about using children’s literature to engage students in science, finding recommendations for science trade books and books about STEM, and facilitating today’s Daily Do: What can I observe in the outdoors?

In this activity, students use their senses (seeing, listening, and smelling) to explore nearby natural areas. Students use a field journal to record their observations in words, drawings, and/or symbols. (Upper-elementary students may use tables.)

A field journal is a notebook that allows scientists, naturalists, and everyone interested in nature to record or sketch what they see. Anything can be used to create a field journal: notebooks, sheets of paper stapled together or attached to the top of a book with a binder clip (makes a good surface for writing), and so on. You may choose to print the field journal pages included in the How do I describe my environment? collection of resources, but using these pages is not required.

Materials

• construction paper (variety of colors), cut into 2 in. x 2 in. squares
• colored pencils, crayons, or markers
• field journal (1 per student)

Discuss

Ask students to think about a familiar green space (in their backyard, local park, window box, a tree square in the sidewalk, field, woods, etc.), then share all of the things found there (grass, worms, birds, bugs, garbage, rocks, etc.) Ask them, "Does your green space have any smells? Are there any sounds you've heard coming from the green space?"

Ask students, “If we wanted to learn how an area (green space) changes over time, how could we figure it out?”

Students may suggest taking pictures of the area or revisiting the area to look at it. Tell students scientists do take pictures and revisit areas they are studying from season to season and year to year. Then ask, "How do you think scientists (naturalists) compare the sights, smells, and sounds in the area they are studying from one visit to the next visit to the next visit?" Guide students to understanding the idea that scientists or naturalists record what they see, smell, and hear and may make sketches or drawings of things they are most curious about in their field journals. (You'll return to the idea of an area changing over time in the second investigation.)

Whether in the city, country, or suburbs, students observe the plants and animals in an area over time to describe how that area changes.

Preparation

Locate an area close to home or school that students will be able to visit several times during the spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Discuss

After reading Secret Place, connect the story to students’ own experiences by using "Text to Self-Connection," which is when a reader connects something that they are reading or hearing in the story to their own experiences of life. Consider using the prompt "This story reminds me of the time I visited….”

Venture Outdoors

Tell students they will be making observations about their own (or the class's own) "secret place" over time to see if and how it changes. Tell students, "We are going visit this place to make observations many different times. How will we be able to tell which notes and drawings we made during each visit?" (We could write things down about our visit next to our notes/drawings like the date, day, time, and weather.) Then ask, "How can we represent our observations in our field journals?" (writing, drawings, symbols, lists, tables).

Tell students where you are heading together (playground, creek, garden, woods, etc.) Ask, “What are some things you would expect to see in this environment? Why do you say so?"

Provide ample time for students to explore the "secret place," and describe the area in their field journal (what they see, hear, and smell). Questions such as, “Has anyone looked up from where you are standing? Has anyone scrunched down and looked at the ground?" help children make observations from different points of view. Next, ask students to draw the secret place (or mark off part of the secret place with a rope or hula hoop if it is a large space).

Students' observations (writing, drawings, symbols, lists, tables) of the secret place will change as the secret place changes over time. It's likely changes in recorded observations will also become more detailed as students gain practice. An activity of longer duration could be the creation of an illustrated book similar to Secret Place that uses the student’s notes and drawings.

Writing Opportunities

Students' field notes and drawings can be used to support language arts lessons through writing samples, poems, and even letters requesting further information about the park or other area from local sources.

One example of students using the observations in their field journal to write a poem comes from Outdoor Science by Steve Rich. "Poetry in the Great Outdoors" encourages students to select something they closely observed,  then create an acrostic poem. An acrostic poem uses each letter in a given word to start a sentence. The example provided below uses the word bugs.

Background

The investigations inspired by I Took a Walk and Secret Place bring students and their families outdoors and immerse them in their local environment, whether that is city streets or neighborhood parks or country fields or woods or carefully shaped and manicured suburbs. Like the characters in the books, students make observations about the things they find on their journeys and communicate those observations (through lists, notes, and drawings) to others. Students begin to understand how the individual parts of their environment interact with one another and their role in caring for this system.

More opportunities are possible for students to interact with the stories than the ones described in the above investigations. Students can make additional observations and predictions based on the illustrations and prompting text. For example, while reading Secret Place, students could make predictions about the animals that visit the river and observations about the pictures of the city, or compare the animals that visit a meadow to the ones that visit a wooded area. Providing students with these opportunities not only improves observation and communication skills, but also improves reading skills by helping students connect the text to their own world and experiences.

Safety Notes

• Students should keep a safe distance from all live animals. Do not let students try to touch, catch, or pick up animals.
• Students should not touch flowers or other plants.
• Students should remain with an adult at all times. Do not let students run ahead or visit locations with water without adult supervision.
• Students and adults should wash their hands after being outside.

NSTA has created a What can I observe in the outdoors? collection of resources to support teachers and families using this task. If you're an NSTA member, you can add this collection to your library by clicking Add to My Library, located near the top of the page (at right in the blue box).

The NSTA Daily Do is an open educational resource (OER) and can be used by educators and families providing students distance and home science learning. Access the entire collection of NSTA Daily Dos.