Winter Season: Fostering Inquiry
The Winter Season focuses on skill-building to support students’ scientific achievement and to help them better understand the world around them. Students utilized Next Generation Science practices including asking questions, making predictions & observations, and constructing explanations. We followed student wonderments by exploring a familiar schoolyard animal—the squirrel—and also worked with students to conduct an in-class worm habitat investigation. The concept of “habitat is a linking theme between the lessons.
Oxbow educators and Frank Wagner Elementary kindergarten teachers completed a workshop focused on place-based education and identified assets at the school, which led to one of the most rewarding lessons of the year: a squirrel food scavenger hunt in the schoolyard right outside the classroom!
Downloadable lesson plans and video resources are below.
Download a PDF of the Winter Season Overview
December
In-class Lesson: Compost Feeds the Soil
Lesson theme: Compost feeds the soil, the worms, and our plants!
Linking Lesson: Post-December activity A to Z Compost Stew
Linking Lesson: Pre-January Activity Squirrels and Seeds
January
In-class/Outdoor Lesson: Squirrels and Seeds
Lesson theme: Squirrels and trees help to meet each other’s needs.
Linking Lesson: Post-January Lesson Squirrels and Seeds
February
In-class Lesson: Intro to the Watershed
Lesson theme: A watershed is an area of land where water flows to a common point.
Linking Lesson: Post-February Activity Watershed Hand Map
Videos
Let’s Learn About Compost!, December 2017: https://youtu.be/mRpvc6qqnMo
Oxbow Introduces Squirrels, January 2018: https://youtu.be/UgeTuKVfBc0