Home
Teacher professional development eZine for integrating science and literacy in the elementary classroom. Issue 11 focuses on birds of the polar regions.
While authentic inquiry might pose a unique set of challenges for classroom teachers, we've found that students of all ages have become successfully engaged in schoolyard inquiry through citizen-science projects.
See what other BirdSleuth students are doing, and send us your work in our student publications: Classroom BirdScope and BirdSleuth Reports
Each year, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology publishes the research of students involved in the BirdSleuth program. By coming up with questions, conducting original investigations, and sharing their findings, students participate in the scientific process. This article was submitted by a fourth-grade class in New Haven, New York.
BirdSleuth is a inquiry-based science curriculum that engages kids in scientific study and real data collection through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's exciting citizen science projects.
We've developed nine lessons using bird behavior to teach physical setting and living environment standards. Below are links to selected sound and video examples from the Macaulay Library that can be used with the lessons or on their own.
While birds and other animals are popular topics with elementary students, it can sometimes be challenging to create truly hands-on lessons about them. With the help of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, we're pleased to provide a nine-lesson unit that ties observation and study of birds with physical science concepts. We also include lessons that deal with pollution's effect on birds and migration.
The arctic tern is an amazing migratory bird, traveling over 22,000
miles in a year from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again.
Students will map this bird's migration route and consider why it wants
to migrate so far. They will conclude by writing paragraphs describing
the arctic tern's migration route and explaining how they think it knows
when it's time to migrate.
Students create a model arctic tern using patterns and heavy card stock.
They simulate fishing, nesting, and migration using their models.
Your students follow six Adelie penguin families via data and pictures, updated daily. Students can create field books and record observations, weather conditions, and nest status. The data can also be used for the Nesting Time and Population Counts activities. The education page of the Penguin Science web site also includes several other activities and information about Antarctica.
Interdisciplinary units – science, math, geography, and language arts.
Interdisciplinary units – science, math, geography, and language arts.
Students will learn about emperor penguins' habitat and behaviors through Web sites such as National Geographic Creature Feature: Emperor Penguins and will illustrate a map to show what they have learned. They will view pictures of icebergs that are affecting penguin colonies and consider what impacts these icebergs might have on the penguins. They will conclude by writing paragraphs describing the maps that they have illustrated.
Join us on a special trip up to Bathurst Island to record birdsongs, and learn about how you can use bird observations to create scientific inquiry in your classroom using ebird.org and birds.cornell.edu/birdsleuth. For more information: Beyond Penguins Issue 11: Arctic and Antarctic Birds.
Did you know that of the 17 penguin species, only a few live or nest in Antarctica? Or that many of our familiar bird species from the mid-latitudes migrate to breed in polar regions? While we’re all familiar with Emperor penguins, there are many other fascinating birds that call the polar regions home at least part of the year. In this session, develop your own content knowledge and learn how to use birds to promote inquiry, teach physical science concepts, and integrate hands-on science instruction with reading strategies and other literacy skills.
Antarctic Tern video from the Macaulay Library, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems
Raven is a software program for the acquisition, visualization, measurement, and analysis of sounds.
18 items | 16 visits
Resources from the NSDL/NSTA Web Seminar, "Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears: Arctic and Antarctic Birds", April 21, 2009. Presenters from the Beyond Penguins project and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology highlight teaching materials related to science content on birds, classroom activities, and lite...
Updated on 2009-04-21
Created on 2009-04-17
Category: Schools & Education
URL:
