Fourth Grade Science Field Trips at School

With the outdoor activities below, fourth graders start to really coordinate with older grades and with future fourth grade students for the purpose of studying, comparing and logging what is happening in the naturalized area of the school grounds.  By doing so, the children will learn the scientific method, accurate record keeping and collaborating while they observe and discover what's happening above and below ground in this local habitat.

Understanding Life Systems: Habitats and Communities

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.

Overall Expectations:
• analyze the effects of human activities on habitats and communities;
• investigate the interdependence of plants and animals within specific habitats and communities;
• demonstrate an understanding of habitats and communities and the relationships among the plants and animals that live in them.

Square Meter Study*

Required Materials

• string, or square meter frame (see image)
• trowels and/or shovels
• sheets of cardboard, plastic or fabric
• record keeping paper, rough copy
• field guides
• iNaturalist app on teacher's or parents' phone
  
• digital calendar, optional*
• thin, small nature journal notebook, optional*
  

Research Activity 

For this field trip at school, ask for parent volunteers just as you would for a field trip offsite. 

 

Half the students and adults are going to do a “square meter" or "quadrant" study in the mowed school yard. The other half of the students and adults do the same thing but in the mulched part of the school yard. Tell students that they are going to do what scientists do: collect data. Model how they will record what they find (see three ideas below). Make a string square in their designated part of the school yard. Observe and record what you see in it. Have field guides and iNaturalist on a phone available to identify plants in the quadrant.

 

With trowels or a shovel, dig up a slice of soil in the string square. Put the 'slices' of soil on a piece of cardboard or a large sheet. Count the amount of insects you see in the circle and the soil. Even better, describe them.

Afterwards, come together and compare your findings and your soil samples.  Be curious together about the differences.  

Unlike third grade, who do this square meter study also, fourth graders collaborate with sixth graders to record their findings for the benefit of future fourth graders. And after at least a year of record keeping, they also prepare brief summaries to share with sixth graders about how the habitat in the school’s naturalized areas has changed from previous years.  With this information, the sixth graders explore and research why those changes took place. They, in turn, will come back to share their findings with the fourth graders.

If the above set of data was collected on a sunny day with fairly dry soil conditions, go out and do it again on a day after rain when the soil is moist but not wet.  Compare the differences.

There are a couple of ways in which fourth graders can record and share what they find in the schoolyard habitat with the school for years to come:  

1. Join with sixth graders also to start a schoolyard habitat calendar. On it, record what-happens-when in your schoolyard. That's called phenology: the study of cyclical and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life.  After a year of collecting data, you can custom-design a calendar to highlight the natural events in your very own schoolyard. Your calendar could include: average temperature, bloom dates of flowers, expected date of returning birds and insects (this is the easiest way to keep records from year to year). 
2. You and sixth grade can contribute to a whole network of people in North America who collect phenology data at Budburst.org from the Chicago Botanical Gardens (this is the easiest way to keep records for teachers short on time).
   
   
    
   
3. Your fourth graders can start nature journaling: the process of recording their observations about plants, trees and other natural things on paper. Nature journaling helps your students improve their observation skills and see big-picture ecological patterns more clearly (this is the easiest way to keep records for teachers or schools that are tech-challenged or tech-wary).
   
   In a nature journal, students draw a specific plant or animal (probably an insect) and add observations with it, such as the date and time, the weather, and what they noticed.  Brian Mertins suggests this prompt: "Imagine you had to describe your nature experiences to someone who wasn’t there, and include such vivid depth and clarity that they could see what you saw, hear what you heard." They also write down questions, the purpose of which is simply about feeding their curiosity and giving them the opportunity to think about what else they could explore.
   
   Make clear to your students the purpose or purposes of their journaling. Will you assess their appreciation of the environment? Do you want them to get better at identifying bugs, plants and trees? Is the purpose the documenting the life in and succession of the local habitat?  With their journals, they can stretch and focus their learning, and you have evidence of their learning.
   
   A perpetual nature journal is one in which this year's fourth graders dedicate a page spread to the quadrant observations on a particular date. They record their observations and questions as described above on a part of a spread. Then next year's fourth graders will add their written and drawn observation of the same date on the same spread.  After a number of years, those two nature journal pages will be a record of the changes that took place in the school's habitat.

 Joined to this task could be the Grade 4 Social Studies expectations of mapping. During their Canada or United States unit, students can map the schoolyard and participate in the Nature Conservancy’s Habitat Network project.

Fourth grade students will benefit from exploring the habitat of a log placed in one of the gardens, and observing the decomposition of organic matter. Assign a few students to roll over the log, always towards them. They need to mind their toes of course, but it prevents a startling surprise in case a garter snake is resting under the log.

Petting Zoo
Many regions have a traveling petting zoo business that will come to your school with farm animals for your classes to explore for the Habitats and Communities curriculum expectations. It is normally much cheaper than any field trip, especially if more than one class takes advantage of the zoo while it’s at school. Get chaperones the way you would for a field trip.

Enjoying the petting zoo allows your students to review and reinforce the vocabulary (organism, community, habitat, environment, abiotic and biotic factors, predator and prey), and you could ask them to ponder whether any of the petting zoo animals could have everything they need from a habitat in your schoolyard.  How would the schoolyard need to change for the animal to be 'successful' (able to thrive and reproduce) there?

Coordinate with Kindergarten and Grade 2 to set a date for the Petting Zoo to come (see those classes’ outdoor lesson ideas).

For more ready-made science lessons for outside, with worksheets, click here.

*lesson from Teaching in the Outdoors, Fifth ed.  Donald Hammerman, William M Hammerman, Elizabeth L. Hammerman