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Hi Maddy, my name is Lucie and I am a Pre-service teacher at Francis Marion University. Over this semester I have discovered a lot of new community resources and how they can be used to teach science. Some examples include Project Learning Tree, Action for a cleaner tomorrow (Dhec), and Lynches River County Park. During this semester I learned that there are many free resources teachers can gain and use by reaching out to their community. Gaining my Project Learning Tree certification took two classes where I received a free book on how to bring the outdoors inside the classroom. My professor reached out to Dhec and they were able to teach us about how to bring recycling into the classroom using the book we received Action for a cleaner tomorrow. My class and I took a field trip to lynches river county park and discovered many learning opportunities their would be for children there and the best part about it is that it is free. There are so many community resources available for teachers all you have to do is reach out and ask for them. I would say the more opportunities for children to be able to have real world experiences to relate to science the better. 

Hi Maddy! I think that is an awesome starting point to get students involved with the community! It's a great idea to look for opportunities to extend science behind the classroom. I'm also a preservice teacher and so have found that when I can relate the science content to something outside of the classroom, the students seem to respond better and become more engaged! This semester I was able to take a course on citizen science which where the public (volunteers) can participate in collecting data for researchers, scientists, and more! I think this would be a great resource to tie into your classroom—it engages students with the outside community and allows for plenty of learning opportunities that can overlap with the NGSS science standards. One website where you can find the citizen science projects are on scistarter.org. Here, there are multiple citizen science projects that students, or you as the teacher, can choose from. They are all organized through topic, grade level, time of completion, and so much more, that there is opportunity to implement a citizen science project with any lesson. I hope this was helpful to you!