Fifth grade scientists are studying campus birds and plants in a unit designed to develop their scientific observation, documentation, and curiosity skills, while building content knowledge about animal needs and behaviors with a local bioregional lens. Students will apply their learning not only to studying campus wildlife habits but also to a cross-disciplinary project in the Hub that will allow each student to make a difference for a local bird species! This week and last, students began keeping nature journals by documenting detailed observations of a single redwood leaf, using their prior knowledge of qualitative and quantitative observations. Their challenge was to draw and label their own leaf specimen with enough detail that when all the class leaves were mixed together a peer could match their journal entry to their leaf.
After matching peers’ leaves to their entries—which is both fun and also reinforces the need for detailed observations—we will turn our attention to birds on Hillbrook’s campus. Students will learn about and draw anatomical features of birds and notice their behavior and adaptive strategies. We will have a chance to learn about impacts of abiotic features on birds and learn about ways that human-built structures can encourage and support bird life. The unit will culminate in a project to plan and construct birdhouses in the Hub, mounting them around our campus, and basing their dimensions and entry design on the needs of a particular species of campus bird.