If you’re an educator, OR if you care about informally sharing nature with young people, this post might give you some useful ideas.
Back in the fall of 2021, I started collaborating with a few other educators* to write a STEM Teaching Tool for Nature Journaling. STEM Teaching Tools is a website funded by the National Science Foundation to share “research- and practice-based knowledge” about methods to teach Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
Our tool was finally just published!
“Finding phenomena that are safe, accessible, culturally relevant, and grounded in the place where students live can be challenging for educators. Nature Journaling (NJ) can provide simple tools and strategies that educators can employ to encourage students’ investigations of local phenomena through deeper observations. In addition, helping students explore phenomena in local outdoor places leverages their interests and supports building relationships and awareness about community and neighborhoods.”
You can read the full article here: https://stemteachingtools.org/brief/92
If you like this tool, I’d love to know what parts are most useful to you!
Enjoy 🙂
~Rebecca
*This tool was written by Meenakshi Sharma, Rebecca Rolnick, Anne Stephens, and Kathryn Hayes. Anne Stephens was a keynote speaker at the 2021 Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Teachers Conference, where she spoke about her research related to nature journaling as “a space for student sensemaking regarding the NGSS Crosscutting Concepts.”