We provide a number of curricula, activity guides, and other resources to support hands-on, inquiry-based investigations of the ecosystems and organisms around us. Emphasis is on studying local populations of important and interesting microbes, plants, and animals, and on understanding how local ecosystems - schoolyards, gardens, neighborhoods, streams, ponds or forests - function.
 The Teaching Ecosystem Literacy website is a place for teachers and Cary Institute educators to share and comment on draft lesson plans, discuss important topics, post grant opportunities, and keep in touch with like-minded colleagues. If you would like to be a collaborator in this online community, please contact Kim Notin.
Eco-Choices Lesson: Ecosystem Consequences of Town Decisions
Using the idea that environmental impacts are interrelated, students make decisions for hypothetical towns. They will discover that their decisions have consequences on water quality, air quality, biodiversity and human health; while realizing that air and water movement connect communities. This 2 hour lesson (which can be divided over 2 class periods) has been used in 5-12 grade classrooms.
Pathways to Ecosystem Literacy: A collaboration of the Millbrook Central School District and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Learning progressions are one of the leading edges of education research and curriculum development. This work recognizes that the unconnected, inconsistent topics that make up the majority of standards and curricula in our schools must be replaced. Using teachers' knowledge about how and what students learn at each grade and scientists knowledge about the essential understandings in their field, cohesive learning progressions can be mapped.
Beginning in March 2007, an interested group of K-5 teachers and administrators from the Millbrook Central School District and District began collaborating with the Cary Institute Education staff to build an Ecosystem Literacy learning progression. The collaborators identified 4 strands of ecosystem literacy and begun to elaborate one of these strands, water. The table below links to the lesson plans piloted during the 2007-2008 school year.
Special thanks to our teacher collaborators at Elm Drive Elementary and Alden Place Elementary: Sheila Robinson, Karen Tegeler, Rosalie Carey, Sarah Rizzo, Joanne Carrazzone, Katie Doyle, Marianne Ronis, and Bill Yager. This project has been supported in part by a grant from the Northeast Dutchess Fund of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
Schoolyard Ecology Inquiry Idea Starters are short activities suitable for elementary students. Originally developed as part of the Schoolyard Ecology for Elementary School Teachers (SYEFEST) project and included in the Schoolyard Ecology Leaders' Handbook, these simple write-ups have been extremely popular among educators far and wide. For a list of the activities and links to each one, go to: www.ecostudies.org/syefest/appen1main.htm.
 Eco-Inquiry, an ecology curriculum for grades 5-8 developed by Dr. Kathleen Hogan, a former Associate Scientist, helps teachers transform their classrooms into centers of ecological research. Students learn about the flow of matter in ecosystems as the practices of science are demystified and made engaging. Over 5,000 copies of the 400-page teacher's guide have been sold. For a copy, contact the publisher, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company ($34.95 plus shipping, call: 800-228-0810). Two Eco-Inquiry supplements also are available from Kendall/Hunt: Rita - a book for children, and Promoting Student Thinking - A Teachers' Guide to Linking Science and Literature Through Rita.
The Schoolyard Ecosystem takes children through a series of explorations of their schoolyard as a model human or urban ecosystem. Students develop an appreciation for the different kinds of land covers and ecological communities comprising their school grounds using their own observations and aerial photos. They then use their maps to ask questions about biological, physical, and social functions of the schoolyard as a whole. In the final of the three units, students, teachers, and parents explore links between the school grounds and the surrounding community. Drafts of the curriculum are available for review from Kim Notin, at (845) 677-7600 ext. 303 or via email.
Investigating Urban Ecosystems Units, produced by scientists, educators and students in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES), support teachers and other educators in studying their local urban or suburban environments. Topics of units that will be available in March 2007 include earthworms and soils, watersheds and water quality, and schoolyard hydro-ecology. Other units under development include: neighborhood environmental assessment, tree treasures, the city breathes (CO2 in the city) and animals in the urban landscape. For more information, contact Alan Berkowitz, BES Education Team Leader, at (845) 677-7600 ext. 311 or via email.
Worm Worlds is an activity guide developed by Drs. Berkowitz and Patrick Bohlen (a post doc at the time) for the North American Association for Environmental Education. The Worm Worlds Activity Guide (.pdf 1,215 kb - opens in new window) is used throughout the country in the Volunteer-Led Investigations of Neighborhood Ecology (VINE) program.
Small Watersheds Ecology Assessment Packets (SWEAP), including a curriculum handbook, air photos (current and historical), soil maps and topo maps, are available for four school districts in Dutchess County: Arlington, Millbrook, Hyde Park and Dover. Each packet guides middle or high school teachers in engaging their students in a comparison of three contrasting small watersheds near their school. The SWEAP Handbook contains lessons in map reading, air photo interpretation, field reconnaissance and basic watershed ecology that are of interest to educators beyond those in Dutchess County as well.
Ecology Field Programs Activities and new Ecosystem Explorations Educators' Guides are available now. Teachers planning to bring their students to field and inquiry-based programs for school groups are able to download pre- and post-program activities as well as read the details of the program. Teachers across the nation are also able to download these programs for use in the classroom, schoolyard, or neighborhood.
For information on any of these resources, please call the Education Office at 845-677-7600 ext. 303 or e-mail Kim Notin. |
