Curriculum+Review+5

This is review of the National Wildlife Foundation's group of activities [|"Building Green School Grounds and Teaching STEM Principals."] These activities are part of the larger Potential Schoolyard Habitats site. It designed to create "authentic outdoor learning laboratories on school grounds and related curriculum." The mission is to turn "nature" into a classroom. This fits the NWF's larger conservation mission. These activities recivefunding through Motorola and are part of the NWF Eco-School USA programs.

The lessons scaffold each other and provide teachers and students with a way to teach STEM subjects through hands on activities that aim to explore the school grounds as part of a research project on habitat, species, human impact, and more. I think it is outstanding that these activities focus on schools as sites of research. This can extend across different parts of the school, including ICT, student health, and more. This also sets up the conditions for students to advocate for institutional change. I think the lessons could have gone further to introduce students to ideas about how to talk to adults and build advocacy plans.

The lessons include a number of eco ed literacies, including: understanding health issues and their causes; understand how their own actions influence ecology; reach across disciplines to gain ecological understandings; understand potential change; creative research practices; understanding deliberation; and more.