The Backyard Ecology Content Stream Continues to Deepen
This is now the fourth week of Long-View@Home and our three science strands are deepening their work. For Strand 1: Biogeographic Survey, Ms. Swanson gets into the distinction between nature journaling and field guides. Learners are now shifting away from nature journaling (which is how the unit started) to creating field guides that help us identify things in nature. If the kids want to keep up their nature journaling, Ms. Swanson encourages them to do so by studying The Laws Guide To Nature Drawing and Journaling (John Muir Laws). She noted that this book is more focused on the art than the science of nature journaling, but it's a really great tool for any naturalist who wants to build on this skill set.
Ms. Swanson also starts the week off by giving scientists a glimpse into the cool work their colleagues are doing in their own homes. In the Week 4 video, she tells about how Clara is looking at the lichen on a mulberry tree in her yard, Astrid is studying the plants and animals around a mountain laurel tree in her yard, and Dasher is looking at cacti. She continues that Sofia has already created some illustrations, and Margaret and Luciana have already started research. These field guides are off to a wonderful start!
Moving forward, learners in the Biogeographic Survey strand will continue to think about their content, as well as the format they will use to communicate that content clearly. Ms. Swanson gave many ideas for possible formats, including thinking beyond the traditional printed book. To make these decisions, scientists were encouraged to study published field guides as mentor texts. In her video lesson, Ms. Swanson showed several mentor field guide texts and, in case learners do not have published field guides at their house, she encourages learners to further study the slide deck in Google Classroom.
This week, the scientists in Strand 2: Pillbug Investigation are conducting the same research so that in the coming weeks they will be ready to branch off and design their own investigations. Strand 2 has a slide deck to review with links to various lessons about concepts mentioned in each slide, a very creative way our science teachers are meeting the needs of a variety of learners, allowing everyone to go at the pace that's right for them. Scientists in this strand find out that ethology is the study of animal behavior, and taxis is one type of animal behavior. Taxis is where animals respond to stimuli instinctually (not a learned behavior) with a change in their physical position. In other words, they move in response to something they detect using their senses. With a taxis behavioral response, animals respond by either moving towards (positive taxis) or away (negative taxis) from a stimulus.
This week's guiding question is: Do pillbugs have a taxis response to light? The young scientists use a “choice chamber” to study this question. In the chamber the pillbugs can either choose the dark side (covered) or the light side (no cover) of the container. The scientist then records the time and records his/her data. After this investigation and after analyzing their data, scientists will make a claim, supported by evidence, that addresses the guiding question. Ultimately this practice will lead these scientists to design and execute their own investigations, supported by a claim and an evidence boards in the end, just like is typical during our school-based Science Blocks.
Our Strand 3: Biodiversity Study started this week by watching a video created by Mrs. Winchester which outlines what learners in this strand should have decided on last week, including what type of study they are doing: comparison, association, or abundance study. For example, Finley decided to do a comparison study by placing her quadrat in two places in her backyard (one wet and one dry) and then comparing the worm castings in each. Mrs. Winchester will do an association study, requiring her to make a count of two distinct species (in this case, pillbug and horseherb) to determine if there is any relationship (using a chi-square test). And Avi will do an abundance study to determine the total clover population in his yard. This would be very challenging without some mathematical analysis! Next, there are three video tutorials, one for each type of study. The goals for this week for all scientists in Strand 3 are to clarify a project focus and create data tables in preparation for data collection next week. At the end of this video, Mrs. Winchester tells learners about small group office hours she has assigned. This will give the scientists more opportunity to discuss various projects.
Over the coming weeks scientists will produce field guides, conduct investigations, perform mathematical analysis to aid their scientific discoveries, and more. Because our science teachers have been so creative with the at-home-learning constraints and have kept the “ceiling” high in regards to depth and complexity of the tasks (while also adding in a variety of access points), Long-View learners are experiencing the same high quality teaching and learning in this virtual environment that is typical of their in-person Science Block classes.
