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:

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.