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Hello Brynn,
Budgets, location, regulations can all curtail your ability to take students out of school – so your question is very good. Here are a few things that you could try:
On the grounds
- Gardening – start up raised beds. Apply for grants or contact local nurseries for donations and help.
- Greenhouse – like the raised beds, can you build a greenhouse on the grounds (or the roof)?
- Outdoor infomercials – get students to write, film and direct urban wildlife shorts filmed on school grounds.
- Transects and Quadrat sampling – although not really eye-popping, you could do ecological studies of the grounds. I made quadrats out of bendy straws and had students drop them around the grounds and do species counts. We even
- Species counts – go outside and look for different living things – plants, insects, vertebrates, and so on. Have students do research on what they find and their ecological roles.
- Soil analysis – sample soil and look for soil invertebrates. Try swabbing the soil and culturing the bacteria and moulds on agar plates. Do some chemical analysis and create a recommendation report for the principal to ammend the soil to improve the grounds.
- BBQ science – I taught stoichiometry by making s'mores in a self-contained fire pit I brought to school. (Check with the principal, first!)
Bring it inside
- Bring in the experts – many organizations: zoos, science centers, forestry, planetariums, and more have travelling shows and presenters that you can invite to your school.
- Terrariums – start up colonies of harmless invertebrates you find on the school grounds: crickets, sowbugs, earthworms, and so on.
- Pop bottle ecosystems – have the students create these self-contained ecosystems. I have a link to a library in the NSTA Learning Center that can get you started with this.
- Pond water aquarium – go to a local pond and collect some water, invertebrates and plants and start up a ‘real’ aquarium of local organisms. I kept one for years and we would sample it to observe micro- and macro-organisms.
- Plants – get students to grow plants in the classroom. I had students start vegetables, ornamental flowers and even trees and take them home or plant in the school gardens.
Virtual
- Bird cams, nature cams, etc - there are many websites that have web cams that you can check up on.
- Videoconferencing with a scientist – several organizations will have scientists that you can book time with for a video conference in the field.
- Sister schools – find a school in a remote location or other country that you can contact, run concurrent experiments and have video sessions with where you can exchange data, info, on your separate locations.
Hope this helps!
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