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Geology focused with an emphasis on changing landscapes.

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Grade Level:

Upper Elementary: Third Grade through Fifth Grade

Subject:

Science

State Standards:

4th Grade Arizona State Science Standards
4.E1U1.6
4.E1U1.7

4th Grade NGSS
4-ESS1-1
4-ESS2-1

Middle School Arizona State Science Standards
7.E1U1.5
8.E1U1.6

Middle School NGSS
MS-ESS1-4
MS-ESS2-2

Essential Question:

How can I recognize geologic change in my environment?

Overview:

Using Grand Canyon as an example of universal geological concepts, Grand Canyon Rocks is designed to promote student engagement in place-based science inquiry using a world-class setting. Hands-on activities, observation and journaling facilitate an active learning experience.

The Program is designed to:

Promote discussion and critical thinking

Invite participation from everyone regardless of their level of knowledge and experience

Reflect the essence of what they will study without directing them to one correct answer

Provide knowledge applicable to places beyond Grand Canyon National Park

Desired Results:

Students will be able to explain how rock layers, and the geological column, show evidence that Earth's surface has changed over time

Students will understand how weathering and erosion break rocks into smaller pieces, move them around, cycle materials in the geosphere, and cause change over time in landforms

Students will experience Grand Canyon National Park as a place for learning, scientific discovery, and personal connection

Students demonstrate learning by:

Interpreting the existence of past landforms by engaging in small group discussion about the results of a rock sample investigation

Explaining through an illustrative story or scientific narrative how Grand Canyon as a geographic feature may have looked in the past, and might look in the future

Recording in journals the results of hands-on geological investigations of rock types, weathering, and erosion

Documenting in journals their personal reflections of Grand Canyon through written words or illustrative story

Ties to Arizona Education Standards and NGSS Standards

4.E1U1.6: Plan and carry out an investigation to explore and explain the interactions between Earth's major systems and the impact on Earth's surface materials and processes.

4.E1U1.7: Develop and/or revise a model using various rock types, fossil location, and landforms to show evidence that Earth's surface has changed over time.

4-ESS1-1: Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support an explanation for changes in a landscape over time

4-ESS2-1: Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation

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Field Trip: Grand Canyon Rocks: 4th, 7th and 8th grades - Teachers (U.S. National Park Service)

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Grade Level: Upper Elementary: Third Grade through Fifth Grade Subject: Science State Standards: 4th Grade Arizona State Science Standards4.E1U1.64.E1U1.7 4th Grade NGSS4-ESS1-14-ESS2-1 Middle School Arizona State Science Standards7.E1U1.58.E1U1.6 Middle School NGSSMS-ESS1-4MS-ESS2-2 How can I recognize geologic change in my environment?

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Sonoran Desert Museum - Exploring the Desert

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Sonoran Desert Museum - Exploring the Desert

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Sonoran Desert lesson ideas for a wide variety of topics and field trip guides.

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Teacher Resources

Some of the following files are pdf files. Viewing them requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded free of charge. If you have any trouble downloading the files, please email education@desertmuseum.org or call 520-883-3021.

1. General Sonoran Desert Information

2. Desert Museum Research

3. Sonoran Desert Information for Kids

4. ASDM Press - Books for Kids

5. Digital Library - Student Research and Interactives

Self-Guided Visit Preparation Video

Help your students prepare for their field trip by showing them this short video, which explains what they will see and learn at the Museum, what the Museum environment will be like and how to behave to get the most out of their visit. Please share this link with your chaperones as well.

Teacher Information Packets for Self-Guided Visits

These contain background information on the Sonoran Desert as well as preparatory materials & activities to use with your class. These materials are designed to use with class field trips. All activities correspond to Arizona Academic Science Standards.

Explorer's Guides

Designed to be used by students during their visit to the Desert Museum.

Teacher Packets for Classes, Labs, and Amphitheater Programs

Sample pre and post program materials - additional materials available soon.

If your Desert Discovery Class or Lab's Teacher Information Packet is not listed here, please contact education@desertmuseum.org.

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Some of the following files are pdf files. Viewing them requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded free of charge. If you have any trouble downloading the files, please email education@desertmuseum.org or call 520-883-3021.

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Getting Started With Place Based Education

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Getting Started With Place Based Education

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Connections to food chains/webs, ecological interactions, human impact and more!

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Connections to human impact on natural systems, water cycle, weather patterns, climate, and more!

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This time, we start out online! We invite ALL Project Harvest participants to attend one or both data sharing events online.

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Connections to food chains/webs, migration, population dynamics, and more!

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Urban birding has received a lot of attention lately as a great option to see birds close to home. There are often some very exciting migrant and wintering bird species found in parks and lush landscapes within Tucson and Green Valley. Why is urban habitat so attractive to so many species? In short it is because landscaping can be a better food source for native birds in terms of fruit producing plants such as hackberry and pyracantha than the surrounding native habitat. Sometimes there are more insect prey for birds in an urban setting due to the extra water these landscapes receive and, of course, some of us supplement the natural food supply with feeders. On the other hand we have all experienced the "dead zones" of empty dirt lots and parking lots in Tucson that barely support anything let alone native birds.

Tucson Bird Count is a Citizen Science Program coordinated by the Tucson Audubon Society in partnership with the University of Arizona. The goal of the count is to determine how parts of Tucson are utilized by native birds in order to make more of Tucson into productive urban habitat.

Any birder that can readily identify the birds of Tucson is invited to adopt a route to survey. It only takes one morning of your choice between April 15-May 15 to conduct 5 minute counts at each of the stops along your route. Many of the routes are in urban Tucson and don't require any hiking, you can easily drive from point to point. Other routes are in more natural areas and require some hiking. There are even a few routes that are only hiking.
If you are familiar with most of Tucson's bird species and are interested in helping with the Tucson Bird Count, please contact Jennie MacFarland at jmacfarland@tucsonaudubon.org.

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Urban birding has received a lot of attention lately as a great option to see birds close to home. There are often some very exciting migrant and wintering bird species found in parks and lush landscapes within Tucson and Green Valley. Why is urban habitat so attractive to so many species?

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The Art of Managing Middle School Students

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Edutopia blogger Ben Johnson offers up tricks of the trade for managing middle school kids.

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CLASSROOM SET UP - DAY 1 | MIDDLE SCHOOL SCIENCE LAB | BACK TO SCHOOL TEACHER VLOG

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Best Practice Guidance Assessment in Science v2

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Use this strategy to bring student experience into assessment.

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What happens when students can opt to skip tests and instead give oral presentations or create art to show what they know?

Art Directors & TRIP / Alamy Stock Photo

One day while I was giving a lecture on the life cycle of ferns in a Biology I class, I noticed several students doodling rather than taking notes. Having learned to pick my battles, I ignored this rather than making a big deal about it.

When class was over, I asked one of the doodlers if I could see his notebook. I was flabbergasted to see that he'd made a series of spot-on sketches on the life cycle of ferns.

He explained that he was experimenting with a new note-taking technique using art. He'd been sketching his way through several other classes and was fairly certain that he was understanding and remembering the content better. I told him to continue doing whatever helped and to keep me posted.

Throughout the semester I noticed ways that other students excelled. One enjoyed giving oral reports that incorporated video clips and digital pieces of supporting evidence. Another crafted beautifully written essays, and another was an encourager in her small group, leading her group through some rather sophisticated problem-solving.

How Students Show What They Know

I made a list of all of the ways in which I evaluated my students throughout the semester. There were seven: journaling, lab work, oral reports, a writing cluster (drama, fiction, poetry, and essays), small group work, artwork, and written tests.

When the spring semester began, I told my students that I would be evaluating them using a new approach what would bring student choice to assessment.

Here's the system I set up: Each student would choose at least three modes from the list above for the nine-week grading period. If they didn't want to take tests, they wouldn't have to-they would use other modes to demonstrate the learning that I would previously have tested. Once they made their choices, they had to stick with them for the whole grading period.

It's important to note that students were evaluated only with the modes that they selected. Let's say that a student didn't chose lab work. When we went into the lab, that student went with us-and could participate-but would not receive a grade. I never left any students unattended, and they always had the option to participate.

To evaluate their art and writing-not a common practice in science-I developed Fact Sheets, one for art and one for writing, that were a relatively easy way to do this objectively. If a student created a poster to show their learning, they had to attach an Art Fact Sheet that included 10 facts from the content for that objective that were evident in the poster. On a poster of a typical animal cell, for example, they might write, "Animal cells have mitochondria that are involved in energy production." They would prepare a legend that allowed me to easily identify their facts.

I used the same approach for writing. If a student wrote a short play based on bioengineering principles, for example, they would attach a Writing Fact Sheet and underline the facts from the content for that objective, numbering each one for easy identification.

Writing in science journals can be very subjective: How would I assign a grade to a student's thoughts? Sometimes I used specific questions that had to be addressed. If the student did address the questions, credit was given. At other times I asked that they write a half-page on a given topic. If they did, I gave them full credit.

To make sure their parents and guardians understood this system, I held three open houses and invited several of our local business partners to participate by bringing snacks and a few cool door prizes-I really wanted to encourage participation because it was important that parents understand how my system would work. About 75 percent of my students' homes were represented.

What Students Chose

It was no surprise that very few students signed up to take tests. For the two or three students in each class who chose traditional testing as one of their modes, I made sure they had a comfortable space in the breezeway between the classroom and the lab. Other students worked on their projects while test-takers were busy. It worked out quite well.

Although the student choices were all over the board, the overall percentages that first semester looked like this:

lab work: 95 percent of students

small group work: 93 percent

journaling: 90 percent

oral reports: 40 percent

writing cluster: 15 percent

artwork: 12 percent

written tests: 6 percent

The most common choice combination was lab work, small group work, and journaling-a combination that seems naturally tailored for an active science classroom and lab. Students did not have to participate in the activities of the modes they didn't choose, so 5 percent of my students didn't do the lab work, 7 percent of them didn't participate in small group work, and so on.

Students often forgot what choices they made, so I posted their choices in lists on the back of the classroom door. I also posted the protocols, guidelines, and deadlines on large poster boards.

In order to prevent deadline overload, I staggered deadlines so that no student had more than one project due on any single day-the products in each mode were due on different days.

Reality Check: My Principal's Input

My principal was curious about my new system-and concerned about whether my students were meeting all of the standards and objectives. He asked me to administer one written test at the end of each grading period. Although I didn't think this was necessary, he was the principal.

As it turned out, most of my students performed well on those tests, and after a year my principal seemed convinced that the new system worked well without them.

My original goals in giving students a choice in how I would evaluate them were to provide ownership in the process, to put the burden of responsibility of learning on the students' shoulders, and to help each student be as successful as possible. I also wanted them to discover on their own which modes worked best for them. Most found it refreshing to know that if they made poor choices, they could change them in the next grading period.

An unexpected side effect was that I was never bored-the students constantly surprised me with their creations and apparent understanding of content. And switching from orthodox methods of evaluating student progress-written tests, canned lab activities, and the occasional report-to a choice system created an environment that fostered authentic understanding of scientific principles and concepts. Students began to see themselves thinking and behaving like scientists.

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Bringing Student Choice to Assessment in Science Classes

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What happens when students can opt to skip tests and instead give oral presentations or create art to show what they know? Art Directors & TRIP / Alamy Stock Photo One day while I was giving a lecture on the life cycle of ferns in a Biology I class, I noticed several students doodling rather than taking notes.

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Make sure that place based instruction aligns with NGSS standards.

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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

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Three-Dimensional Science Assessments (image courtesy Achieve and Georgia Science Teachers Association) As Wisconsin implements new three-dimensional standards and assessments, educators will need to work together to understand what "three-dimensional" means for science instruction. Sharing initial resources and processes will be a critical piece of moving forward as a state.

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Place Based Science Inquiry Approach, Wapello Middle School; Iowa DNR

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Physical Science General Inquiry Strategies

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Physical Science General Inquiry Strategies

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Last week, I shared an article with you about five myths that prevent science teachers from doing more labs in the classroom.

This week, I'm going to share with you the myth-busting (<- see what I did there?) solutions which will increase the number of labs a science teacher can do.

When I left the classroom, the number one problem I wanted to solve was that I wanted to have more kids 'doing' science. Now that the 5E lessons and station labs are complete, I've been able to turn my attention to a complete product line of traditional and inquiry labs.

Inquiry Labs for Middle School Science Teachers

Come with me on a detailed exploration of the new inquiry lab series.

The format of the labs has been peer-reviewed by classroom teachers from various states across the country. I'm very proud of the outcome and feel like we nailed the setup.

First and foremost, every lab is going to be editable to meet the needs of your students. <insert roaring applause!>

Every lab will contain three different modification levels: Independent Inquiry, Dependent Inquiry, and Modified Inquiry.

The teacher directions will include some general information about grouping suggestions, and a time-frame for the lab. The TEKS and NGSS standards will also be listed here.

I have been very mindful of the supplies needed for each lab, but most of the labs will require some standard science supplies and perishable items. I will list the supply requirements in the item description so that teachers will know what is needed before making the lab purchase.

The student document starts with an essential question and a background or phenomena.

Depending on the lab version, students will begin working on the procedure or begin to develop their independent inquiry lab.

Data collection with graphs, charts, and diagrams are a large part of the lab experience.

At the end of every lab, students will be answering the essential question with a CER statement. The modified inquiry labs include sentence stems which will provide a little extra help. Don't use CER? I've provided some resources on why you should be, but you can always edit them out.

A set of reflection questions allows the students to think back on their findings and make connections with the content.

Of course, I have also included a teacher answer key with suggested answers and data sets where necessary.

When the inquiry labs bundle is complete, there will be over 100+ uniquely designed labs at your disposal.

I'm not ready to announce the release date yet, but the inquiry labs bundle will be available at a discounted price in April. Next week I'm going to be giving away a free lab for you to download and investigate on your own.

You won't want to miss the time-sensitive announcements. Sign-up below to receive notifications about the free inquiry lab and lab bundle release date.

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Differentiated Inquiry Labs for Middle School Science Teachers | Kesler Science

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Last week, I shared an article with you about five myths that prevent science teachers from doing more labs in the classroom. This week, I'm going to share with you the myth-busting (<- see what I did there?) solutions which will increase the number of labs a science teacher can do.