VV Idea Bank: My Own Backyard

Overview

The My Own Backyard Watershed Experience gives students the opportunity to establish their own personal connection with their local environment, and the tools to reflect on and deepen that connection. Students’ firsthand experiences in their own backyards or schoolyards provide an important foundation for learning key concepts and skills.

Three different, complementary strands make up this Watershed Experience.

Strand 1. Establishing personal connections with our own backyards

Strand 2. Learning & applying fundamental ecosystem concepts and skills

Strand 3. Understanding the interconnectedness of backyards and watersheds

Strands may be incorporated into curriculum and implemented in a number of different ways. Possibilities include:

• All three strands simultaneously or consecutively in the same classroom
• Each of the three strands presented by a different teacher
• One strand each in the fall, winter, and spring
• Three student teams within one classroom working simultaneously on different strands

Activities within each Strand leverage students’ natural curiosity, allowing them to explore and discover for themselves what is in their backyard or schoolyard, and how it connects with, affects, and is affected by what happens in their local watershed. Students use the tools and methods of scientists and social scientists throughout.

The simplicity and introductory nature of this Watershed Experience offers teachers the tools, resources, and inspiration to incorporate outdoor learning and more in-depth Watershed Experiences into their science curriculum and across disciplines.

Inquiry Level

Activities in this Watershed Experience will be written at a Structured or Guided Inquiry level for the intended grades 5-6 audience. Activities may include extensions and modifications for Open Inquiry for use with older students or with those students more practiced at inquiry.

Overview of Standards

Issue

Problem Statement

Our relationship with the environment and with our immediate surroundings is influenced by our culture. Studies show that Americans are spending less and less time outdoors, and the national-to-global focus of most news media and science curricula tends to give us a greater awareness of the global environment than of what is happening in own backyards.

However, new research also shows that people who spend time exploring, learning, and playing outdoors develop stronger connections to and understandings of the place in which they live. In turn, this connection to place fosters a strong stewardship ethic: a desire to understand, care for, and protect their local environment.

Background Information

• Campaign for Environmental Literacy: http://www.fundee.org/facts/envlit/whatisenvlit.htm
• Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: http://richardlouv.com
• No Child Left Inside initiative: http://www.cbf.org
• Benefits of teaching and learning outside
• Place-based learning theory & methods
• Overview of VitalVenture’s Taking Students Outside Page

Introduction

The following essential questions guide students’ Backyard Watershed Experience:

Strand 1. What is my personal connection to my own backyard or schoolyard?

• Outdoor Memories

Students capture through stories, drawings, or poetry their strongest memory of exploring, learning, or playing outside. Students compare their memories with those of younger and older generations during their Investigation. They revisit and reflect on individual and community memories at the end of their Watershed Experience.

• Nature Connection Survey

The Nature Connection Survey prompts students to think about and reflect on their own personal connection with their backyard. It creates a baseline from which students can gauge if/how their relationship with their environment changes as a result of this Watershed Experience. It lets students compare their connections to those of their peers and older generations.

• Where Did the Time Go?

Students log how and where they spend their time over a series of days or weeks. They tally the number of hours spent outdoors versus indoors, and – based on results – set individual and class goals for increasing/ decreasing the amount of time spent outdoors, and/or the ways in which they spend their time outdoors.

Strand 2. Is my backyard an ecosystem?

• Defining Backyard Ecosystems

Students use the scientific definition/ criteria of an ecosystem to make a case for or against their backyard being an ecosystem. Arguments for and against are revisited and refined throughout the Watershed Experience as students further investigate their backyards or schoolyards.

Strand 3. Where does my backyard fit in our larger watershed?

• Where in the Watershed is My Backyard?

Using Google Earth, students figure out where their backyards or schoolyards are in relation to their local watershed boundaries. They identify nearby water resources (streams, ponds) that connect their backyards to their local watershed and to the larger Gulf of Maine watershed.

 

 

Investigation

Strand 1. How connected/ disconnected is our community to our local ecosystems?

• Community Outdoor Memories

Students interview someone in their community from an older or younger generation to capture their strongest memory of exploring, learning, or playing outside. Students compare these memories with their own and identify similarities and differences across generations.

• Community Nature Connection Survey

Students administer the Nature Connection Survey to others in their community. They compare their survey results to those in their community from older and younger generations and identify similarities and differences.

 

Strand 2. How do scientists study backyard ecosystems?

Students revisit the argument they made about whether or not their backyard is or is not an ecosystem. What data could they collect to help them strengthen their argument? Students choose from a number of different scientific investigations they can do in their backyard:

• Sensory Overload/ Observing & Journaling

Students spend time observing their backyard using all of their senses. They use a structured journal to capture their observations, questions, and curiosities about what they see, smell, hear, and feel.

• Simple Biodiversity Quadrat Study

Teams of students conduct backyard biodiversity surveys using randomly-placed 1m² quadrats. They determine which species are the same and which are different, and then count the number of different species that live within their quadrat.

• Timed Abiotic & Biotic Factors Inventory

Teams of students inventory all of the abiotic factors and biotic factors they can in their backyard in 20 minutes.

• Bird Count

Using Cornell’s national Great Backyard Bird Count method and species checklist (http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/), students count the number of different birds they see in their backyard in 15 minutes. They record the greatest number of individuals of a species that they see together at one time. If the investigation happens in late February during the official bird count, students enter their data online and contribute to the national effort.

• Insect Survey

Students set pitfall traps in their backyard to get a sense of the different types of insects living in their backyard. They later collect, identify, count, and compare the different insects that fell into their traps. Students do scientific drawings to hone in on important characteristics and adaptations that allow the insects to live in their backyard ecosystem.

• Human Impact Survey

Students use checklists, digital cameras, and sketch journals to observe and document how the land is being used in their backyard, and how humans are positively and negatively impacting its health.

 

Strand 3. How many backyards does it take to make my watershed?

• Watershed = Backyard + Backyard + ….

Using Google Earth, students roughly quantify/ estimate the number of backyards there are in their watershed. Students get a sense of how integral (or not) backyard ecosystems are. Depending on the type of data collected during their Strand 2 Investigation, students may be able to “scale up” to the entire watershed. Optional comparison studies with rural or urban areas different from their own helps students see and determine the importance of backyard ecosystems across Maine.

 

 

Student Action

Strand 1. Build community-backyard connections

• Based on the results of their Outdoor Memories and Nature Connection Survey investigations, students make a case for their community being either connected to or disconnected from local ecosystems. They come up with ways to either showcase strong community connections or to raise awareness of and remedy the disconnects.
  • Post stories, photos, videos to Google Earth
  • Organize a “Get Outside” challenge (similar to a reading challenge)
  • Create or improve green space in your community

Strand 2. Lay the groundwork for long-term studies

• The Long Haul

Students compile all of the results from their Strands 1 & 2 backyard investigations. They publish their 2010 study in the library or on their school website, and lay the groundwork for their study to be repeated/ replicated by students in successive years.

This baseline of backyard information serves as the initial year of a long-term study from which future generations of students will be able to see and document changes in their environment through time.

Strand 3. Compare backyards within & across watersheds

• Backyard Comparisons

Students compile all of the results from their Strands 1 & 2 backyard investigations. They share their results with a school located in their same watershed or in a different watershed. After comparing results, students consider how and why backyards and schoolyards are the same or different throughout Maine, and what affects that may have on the larger Gulf of Maine Watershed.

NOAA and other resources

If you have great resources to share for this Watershed Experience or any of the associated activities, please contact us. We will be finalizing and publishing this experience soon.