City Observations and Nature Journals

Objectives:

• Conduct independent research on a particular topic related to the urban ecosystem.
  
• Engage in reciprocal learning dynamics
  
• Engage in natural journaling
  

Common Core Standards:

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.4
  
• Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
  
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.2
  
• Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text

Materials:

• Nature Journals

Homework Share and Collaborate:

• Students may work in pairs, small groups or as a class.
  
• Each student should share the information they encountered about the city with their fellow classmates. Students should write down at least three facts or ideas for each item presented.
  

Vocabulary:

• Sustainability: how biological systems remain diverse and productive.
  
• Habitat:  place where a particular population of a species lives.
  
• Biodiversity:  number of species living within an ecosystem
• Food Web: The pattern of overlapping food chains in an ecosystem. A model of feeding relationships
  

Nature Journal:

• Choose one of the Nature Journal activities to conduct as a class on the school campus. 
  
• The intention is to bring the students outside of the class, and to allow them to observe their campus as an “ecosystem” worthy of investigation.
  

• Students should bring their journals and something to write with.
  

Homework/Closure:

• Depending on time, functionality, and scope you may assign another Nature Journal activity for homework, or ask students to simply finish/expand upon the assignment begun in class.