Before you are knee-deep into the term, consider the idea of taking your first grade class outside this fall whenever possible. Give it a go, and I'm quite sure that you will find it beneficial not only for your students but yourself as well!
Start the year with short learning times outside, and focus those short times on one topic, like flowers. During the first visits outside, allow children to run the boundary of the area where you want them to stay, after you describe it. This will dissipate initial energy and allow them to learn that outside time is not always recess time. Expect that it will take a few times for students to learn that. Familiarize your students with the sound that will signal to them that it is time to gather around you.
Curriculum expectations are always based on the Ontario Ministry of Expectations. Many of the activities will reinforce, rather than teach, those expectations. As such, no assessment ideas or rubrics are included. Outside, students and teachers have the opportunity to see, experience and enjoy the wonders of creation about which they are learning.
Understanding Life Systems: Needs and Characteristics of Living Things
“Grade 1 students have a natural tendency to ask questions and an increasing ability to solve problems. They benefit from having numerous opportunities to be outside exploring their schoolyard and surrounding natural areas, activities that can nourish their curiosity and help them develop a caring and respectful attitude towards all living things.” The Ontario Curriculum 2007: Science and Technology
Overall Expectations:
Students can do the same with birds, trees and plants. Birds are identified by four clues: 1. size, 2. shape, 3. color patterns, 4. behaviors (including song), and 5. habitat. This website helps students and teachers put the four clues/keys into practice. Easy birds to ID are chickadees, robins, woodpeckers, blue jays, cardinals, Mallard ducks and Canada geese.
Fun fact: do you see birds preening their feathers? That is like zipping up the 'zippers' of their feathers. Waterfowl especially have to 'zip up' every feather every day in order to stay dry.
With a shovel or spade, dig up a slice of soil for each group of students. Notice the roots, the layers of soil and possibly the creatures in the slice of soil. You are more likely to see soil creatures when the soil is moist.
Understanding Earth and Space Systems: Seasonal Changes
Overall Expectations:
Tell students that animals know that it is time to get ready for winter because of shorter days especially, and temperature changes as well. Be amazed together.
Start the year with short learning times outside, and focus those short times on one topic, like flowers. During the first visits outside, allow children to run the boundary of the area where you want them to stay, after you describe it. This will dissipate initial energy and allow them to learn that outside time is not always recess time. Expect that it will take a few times for students to learn that. Familiarize your students with the sound that will signal to them that it is time to gather around you.
Curriculum expectations are always based on the Ontario Ministry of Expectations. Many of the activities will reinforce, rather than teach, those expectations. As such, no assessment ideas or rubrics are included. Outside, students and teachers have the opportunity to see, experience and enjoy the wonders of creation about which they are learning.
Understanding Life Systems: Needs and Characteristics of Living Things
“Grade 1 students have a natural tendency to ask questions and an increasing ability to solve problems. They benefit from having numerous opportunities to be outside exploring their schoolyard and surrounding natural areas, activities that can nourish their curiosity and help them develop a caring and respectful attitude towards all living things.” The Ontario Curriculum 2007: Science and Technology
Overall Expectations:
- assess the role of humans in maintaining a healthy environment;
- investigate needs and characteristics of plants and animals, including human beings;
- demonstrate an understanding of the basic needs and characteristics of plants and animals, including human beings.
Nature Study
It is recommended that this unit be taught in September when there are an abundance of flowers and insects. Treat time spent outside as a field trip and ask for chaperones. The teacher and other adults will only ask leading questions to make the students think.
Students can go out into the school’s naturalized areas and collect and observe a number of bug species, classify them according to different characteristics using ID chart like the one in this document, and research their names. Through catching, exploring and observing, students will see how different insects live in different habitats.
A detailed lesson plan for insect hunting can be found here.
Students can do the same with birds, trees and plants. Birds are identified by four clues: 1. size, 2. shape, 3. color patterns, 4. behaviors (including song), and 5. habitat. This website helps students and teachers put the four clues/keys into practice. Easy birds to ID are chickadees, robins, woodpeckers, blue jays, cardinals, Mallard ducks and Canada geese.
Fun fact: do you see birds preening their feathers? That is like zipping up the 'zippers' of their feathers. Waterfowl especially have to 'zip up' every feather every day in order to stay dry.
With a shovel or spade, dig up a slice of soil for each group of students. Notice the roots, the layers of soil and possibly the creatures in the slice of soil. You are more likely to see soil creatures when the soil is moist.
Understanding Earth and Space Systems: Seasonal Changes
Overall Expectations:
- assess the impact of daily and seasonal changes on living things, including humans;
- investigate daily and seasonal changes;
- demonstrate an understanding of what daily and seasonal changes are and of how these changes affect living things.
Seasonal Scattergories
It is recommended that this unit be taught in October and November, when seasonal changes of fall are most obvious. Students can go on a 'seasonal change walk' in the school naturalized area and observe of how nature 'goes to sleep'. Once inside, students can present their findings about seasonal change. Just as in the game Scattergories, students score fewer points for an observation that were already made in that round, and more points for an answer no other student has given.
Tell students that animals know that it is time to get ready for winter because of shorter days especially, and temperature changes as well. Be amazed together.
Student Sundials
Materials
-pointy sticks
-meter sticks
-fist-sized stones
Take students outside to make 'student sundials'*. On a sunny day, give each group of students a stake or pointed stick and a meter stick. Ask the students to find a spot in the grass where they can push the pointed stick into the ground upright. Again, this is easier to do in moist soil. Alternatively, they can push it into a ball of modelling clay. Tell them to use a stone to mark the tip of the stick’s shadow.
Have the students return at least twenty minutes later, marking the tip of the shadow with a different stone. Tell them to use the meter stick to form a line on the ground connecting the two stones. This line represent an east-west direction. Ask the students how to determine the north-south line. (The north-south line will be perpendicular to the east-west line.) Then ask the groups to mark that north-south line (maybe with a string or another meter stick), crossing the first at a right angle. Verify their findings with a compass. Ask the students how they could use this activity if they were ever lost.
Note that the shadow stick method cannot be used effectively in regions above 60 degrees latitude.
Tell students that people have discovered the sun's reliable path that allows them to tell time and direction.
Barometer Cones
Have students find and bring coniferous cones to school. Place the cones outside your classroom window. The cones will act like barometers for your class. When dry weather is arriving, the cones will open because any wind will catch the feather-light seed and disperse them far away. When wet weather is coming, the cones will close again to keep the seeds from falling too close to the mother tree.
For more ready-made science lesson plans for outside, with age-appropriate worksheet, click here.
Have you come across outdoor science activities for first graders? Share them by adding them in the comments.
*lesson from Teaching in the Outdoors, Fifth ed. Donald Hammerman, William M Hammerman, Elizabeth L. Hammerman
Comments