Before students can comprehend the global implications of large ecosystems, they first learn how to look closely at the one beneath their feet. What happens to the worms when it rains? What are we noticing about the leaves in the fall? When we plant a seed, what happens?
For our youngest learners in PreK and Forest Kindergarten, the outdoors is a place to explore, notice, wonder, play and ask questions.
As students move into the elementary years, those experiences become increasingly connected to scientific study. Our outdoor nature-based science curriculum for grades 1-4 gives students opportunities to investigate the living systems around them, observe change over time, and begin using evidence to understand what they see. Thus the foundation for serious academic inquiry is laid.
By middle school, those familiar habits of mind have become tools for more sophisticated explorations.
For example, this fall, eighth graders participated in the GLEAMS coastal cleanup, using four areas around campus as sites for investigation. Students collected and recorded data about the types of trash they found in the wetland near the soccer field, on the field itself, in the neighboring woods, and beneath the tent. They graphed their findings, looked for patterns, and considered how different kinds of debris might have ended up in each environment.
Additionally, they had their attention on another Michigan ecosystem—and one of its largest inhabitants. As part of an elk unit, students participated in a simulation exploring the pressures elk herds face and the wildlife-management practices used to maintain healthy populations. They researched Michigan elk and transformed what they learned into Elk in the News! broadcasts, deciding how to communicate scientific information creatively and effectively to an audience.
Then they went into the field.
At Hartwick Pines, a majestic 9,335-acre public recreation area located in Grayling, Michigan, eighth graders saw and heard elk in their natural habitat. The park is renowned for preserving 49 acres of centuries-old, old-growth white pine forest, some of the very last remaining untouched timberlands in the state. Students explored the old-growth forest and the logging museum, encountering a landscape where ecology, human history, and wildlife management intersect.
The trip is a great example of the culmination of an approach to science that begins years earlier.
As a member of early childhood spends time building bug hospitals, and an eighth grader considers the forces affecting an elk population, both are looking closely at something in the natural world at appropriate levels of complexity. The common thread is learning to pay attention to a place, ask questions about what happens there, and use observation and evidence to understand it.
Another example of this learning is the Salmon Unit. Just this week, fifth and seventh graders traveled to a state fish hatchery. Soon, those students will welcome salmon eggs to a tank in the library. They will raise those eggs to fish throughout the school year. In the spring, those fish will be released into the Platte River, just upstream from the hatchery.
Research into place-based and environmental education helps explain the value of this approach. Studies suggest that connecting learning to authentic environments can support student engagement, environmental understanding, and students’ ability to connect classroom concepts with the systems they encounter around them. The goal isn't simply to spend more time outside. It is to make the environment itself part of the context for learning.
And as students grow, more complex contexts open up to them with talented teachers guiding their learning.