Low-Stress Summer Lesson Planning: Start with the Fun Stuff!

It's so important for teachers to take a break and recharge over the summer so they can return refreshed for the new school year. As we all know, it's also necessary to do some planning before school starts up again. A strategy I discovered to ease back into prepping lessons is to begin with the fun stuff. Coincidentally, this planning needs to be done first anyway!

Planning fun events and activities can be enjoyable and make you look forward to the upcoming school year. For me, the "fun stuff" includes field trips and projects that connect students with parts of our community outside of the classroom. 

Some field trips that are popular with students can get booked quickly, and this is the perfect excuse to work on this task first! In San Diego, one popular excursion is a field trip to the tide pools at Cabrillo National Monument. Once the trips open up on their website, they go like hot concert tickets. (Well, almost!) These trips are usually available to book beginning in mid-to-late August.

Another project that can might entice you to get a head start on your lesson planning is the Future City Competition for students in grades six, seven, and eight.

In the Future City Competition, students are challenged to imagine and design sustainable cities of the future. (The competition itself is not required.) Every year a new theme is chosen that relates to an issue currently in the news or, as I have found, one that soon after becomes a headline. I have found that participating in the Future City project has given my students and me insights into pressing issues around sustainability.

Another great way to connect students with the greater world beyond the classroom is through service learning experiences. It can be helpful to start making connections over the summer.

As a science teacher, you may want to give your students the opportunity to volunteer at a community garden or nature preserve. There are many possibilities for homeroom and other classes, too.

Beginning your summer lesson planning with "the fun stuff", like field trips and special projects, can make the planning seem less like work. You'll be getting yourself ahead in the game and enjoying the process, too! Sometimes it's just the thing you need to get yourself started in preparing for the school year ahead.

For those who live in San Diego, here is a link to the science education programs Cabrillo National Monument:

Cabrillo National Monument: Science Programs

This is a link to an earlier blogpost about exploring the tide pools at Cabrillo National Monument:

It's Tide Pool Season in California!

If you are interested in learning more about the Future City Competition, see my previous blogpost:

Students Explore Engineering and Sustainability through the Future City Competition

Link to Future City Competition website:

Future City Competition

For more service learning ideas and to see how it can benefit students, see this previous blogpost:

Students Give Back with Service Learning

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Summertime Science: Garden Plant Families

 

Who doesn’t love their produce garden-fresh? One of the most satisfying endeavors for me personally is growing and harvesting food in my garden. Picking something right off the plant to enjoy myself or share with others is very rewarding. I enjoy the process of supporting the plants’ growth, and I appreciate understanding how each of my plants is related to the other wild and cultivated plants in our world.

I am fortunate to have the privilege of tending a plot in our local community garden. Recently I planted a couple of cherry tomato seedlings. You may know that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family (Solanaceae). If you compare the flowers of a tomato plant with those of a wild nightshade, you will notice similarities.

Tomato Plant Flowers

Nightshade Flowers

Flowers of both the garden tomato and the wild nightshade are perfect, or bisexual, flowers. They are star-shaped with five petals, and at the center, fused anthers (male part) surround the style (female part). Other members of the nightshade family that you may see in your garden include bell and hot peppers, eggplant, and potato.

Some of the other plants now in bloom are members of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae). In addition to gourds, this plant family includes pumpkins, squash, melons, and cucumbers.

Cucumber Blossom

Squash Blossom

A wild member of the gourd family native to Southern California is wild cucumber. Despite its name, it's not edible. The fruit is prickly and toxic!

Wild Cucumber (Marah macrocarpa)

Members of the gourd family typically have flowers with five fused petals. Flowers are unisexual, meaning that each flower has either male parts or female parts. It can be fun to hand pollinate these flowers. If you are interested in trying hand pollination in your garden, there is information about this in an earlier blogpost: 

Summertime Science in the Garden: Pollination

One of the showier flowers currently in bloom is the sweet pea.

Sweet Pea Flowers

My Daughter with Sweet Pea Flower Bouquet 

Sweet peas are members of the bean family, or Fabaceae. Flowers are bisexual with five petals. They have bilateral symmetry, with one large petal at the top and four smaller ones below. Green beans and other kinds of beans, peas, lentils, and peanuts belong to this family. So do many wild plants, including acacia, locust trees, and lupines. 

Lupine, Member of the Bean Family

If you have the chance, I highly recommend spending some time in a garden this summer!

If you would like to read other blogposts related to exploring science in the garden, see these blogposts:

Springtime Science in the Garden: Plant "Cousins" and a Baby Skunk!

Summertime Science in the Garden: Pollination

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Ideas for End-of-School-Year Activities

 

The end of the school year is an exciting time but also the most challenging time to hold students' attention. Who could blame students for wishing their summer vacation would only come sooner? Teachers are looking forward to it, too! 

Luckily, the end of the school year is also a time when teachers and students feel less pressed to delve into new material and can instead engage in activities that focus on the classroom community. I'll offer a few suggestions here for activities that have worked well with my students in the past.

Playing games is a fun way to review academic material. In a previous blogpost, I described a couple of games you can use for teaching vocabulary. Below is a link:

Low-Prep Games for Teaching Vocabulary

Bringing an easy art activity into the classroom is another idea. If you have a collection of magazines or can get donations, you can have students make collages about themselves. I described this in a previous blogpost as a beginning-of-the-year activity, but I found it works nicely as and end-of-the-year project as well. Here's a link:

Decorate Room with Student Collages

Service learning activities could take some preparation but can also be done simply by teaming up with a teacher of students in lower grades. For ideas of service learning activities, follow this link:

Students Give Back with Service Learning

One simple yet universally enjoyable activity is going outdoors for a walk. If you have a park or other suitable area close to your school, you could include a picnic or snack break. A walk could have the sole purpose of providing time for teachers and students to connect, but it could also be used to highlight material taught earlier in the school year. For more information on using nature walks as an educational tool, follow the link below:

Get Out of the Classroom and onto the Trail!

Whatever you choose to do, aim to provide yourself and your students with enjoyable experiences. There is always so much going on at the end of the school year, but having quality time together as a class is a nice way to close out the school year.

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Get Out of the Classroom and onto the Trail!

 

As the weather gets nicer, and students begin to feel a bit trapped being indoors, it can be nice to take a break for a day and go outside on a nature walk. 

When I taught at the Museum School in San Diego, we were fortunate to have a trail within walking distance. We also took field trips to local nature preserves. It required some extra effort but was always well worth it!

A nature walk can provide a brief pause from standards-based academics. The natural learning and unexpected discoveries that take place have value in themselves, as does the connection students can form with the natural world. This connection can plant seeds of a lifelong curiosity about ecosystems.

Some students were lucky to catch a glimpse of a gray fox!

Nature walks can also be used to highlight concepts being explored in class. Erosion, natural selection, invasive species, human impact, and biotic vs. abiotic factors are examples of topics that can be reinforced while on the trail. 

At times I used a walk as a stand-alone activity. Other times I used it as a step in guiding the class to generate a question for a field study. In both cases, I prepared students by teaching them about the plants they might see on the trail, and during the walk I asked that they complete a simple observations sheet to encourage them to closely study their surroundings.

One of the most valuable aspects of getting students outdoors and on the trail is to allow them a little unstructured time in nature. This provides us all with an opportunity to get to know one another a little better.

 

If you are interested in another opportunity for outdoor learning, follow this link to my blogpost about a citizen science project on pollinators:

Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

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Springtime Science in the Garden: Plant "Cousins" and a Baby Skunk!

Mysterious holes were appearing in my garden plot. Sometimes I would find a plant or two pulled up, and sometimes not. Either way, the plant was thrown to the side and left untouched. Talk around the Juniper-Front Community Garden informed me that others were experiencing the same issue, and skunks were a principal suspect. This theory made sense to me because I had been seeing more skunks than usual in the neighborhood early in the morning. One morning I was a bit startled but also pretty excited to see a mama skunk with her nervous baby sneak into our garden through an opening in the concrete wall.

Although I was too intimidated to follow the skunks around and try to observe them actually digging the holes, some internet sources describing the kind of holes skunks dig (shallow with dirt tossed around them) made me think that they were likely responsible. It was frustrating to be losing plants after investing time, resources, and hope into my little seeds, but honestly, how could I stay mad at anything so cute as a baby skunk? 

The fight to save my plants sparked an interest in some informal experiments to deter the skunks. Would a tomato cage protect the plants? Are the skunks that gardeners suspect are digging up our plants more interested in compost containing eggshells? These experiments have not been strictly controlled, and they are ongoing and as yet inconclusive, but they are still interesting (when not too frustrating)!

Gardens are filled with opportunities for informal science education. Just digging around in the soil to weed, plant, or harvest leads to new discoveries.

Bringing students or my own child to spend time in a garden inevitably leads to new learning and a connection with the natural world. I've often been surprised at how excited middle school students get over finding a tiny insect, spider, or worm! Gardens attract pollinators and other wildlife that everyone enjoys experiencing.

Looking carefully at garden flowers is a nice springtime activity that can help you learn about plant families. I enjoy observing flowers as an adult, and children can be engaged this way, too. Did you know that tiny strawberry plants and tall apple trees are in the same plant family, meaning they are fairly closely related? Although a look at the entire plant would fool you into thinking otherwise, if you compare their flowers, you can see that their flower structure is very similar. Notice the similar structure of the strawberry and apple blossoms, including their five petals.

Strawberry Flower

Apple Blossoms Photo by Anastasiya Romanova on Unsplash

Both strawberry plants and apple trees are members of the rose family, Rosaceae. If you compare their blossoms with the photo of a wild rose below, you can see similarities, such as the number of petals.

Being in the same plant family means that the plants had a relatively recent common ancestor. How could the strawberry plant and apple tree evolve to be so very different while their flowers remained so similar? Natural selection favors traits that help a plant survive and reproduce. Traits such as growing tall could potentially be beneficial, but a change in the structure of a flower- the plant’s reproductive part- could render the plant unable to reproduce. Changes in flower structure are risky and could be an evolutionary dead end if the plant has no offspring. This is why flower structure stays more constant as other plant parts evolve over time, and why looking for similarities in flower structure gives us a window into the evolutionary history of the plant and helps us identify plant families.

Whether watching for pollinators and other wildlife, observing flowers, or just digging around, a garden in the springtime is well worth a visit!

If you are interested in reading my blogpost on summertime in the garden, follow this link:

Summertime Science in the Garden: Pollinators

If you would like to know how to help collect data on local pollinators, here is a blogpost about the Great Sunflower Project:

Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

Michigan State University Extension has a webpage on skunk holes versus other holes in your garden or yard:

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/whos_that_digging_in_my_yard_skunks_raccoons_or_moles

Thanks to Kerry Woods for sharing his vast knowledge and love of plants with me.

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It's Tide Pool Season in California!

 

As we get closer to winter, the low tides become especially low, so this is an excellent time for viewing ocean life in tide pools. It's a time of year I always look forward to! 

Tide pooling season begins in the fall and continues through the winter and into early spring. It is at these times when you can catch a negative tide during the daytime. If you want to plan a trip, it is helpful to first consult a tide chart like this one for San Diego:

Tide Chart for San Diego

A ranger at Cabrillo National Monument said that any tide at or below 0.7 feet is good for viewing sea life, and the lower the tide, the better.

A trip to the tide pools is always a favorite among students. It feels great to get out to the ocean, and there are always so many things to explore and discover.

California Sea Hare

California Sea Hare Eggs

Tide pooling is a nice activity to do with your family, too!

If you plan to explore to explore tide pools with a school group and live in the San Diego area, Cabrillo National Monument offers some great ranger-lead programs for K-12 students. Their programs are free, and many are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). 

With middle school students, I have participated in the Science Sampler and the Climate Kids programs, both for grades 5 - 12. The Science Sampler program engages students in practicing data collection on populations of organisms living in tide pools, modeling the way in which biologists collect this data at Cabrillo National Monument. The Climate Kids program addresses the affects of climate change, specifically ocean acidification, on sea life. 

Another benefit of a ranger-lead experience is having an expert help you spot hard-to-find creatures such as nudibranchs, sea hares, and on rare occasions, an octopus.

Spanish Shawl Nudibranch

If you are interested in learning more about the science programs offered at Cabrillo National Monument, follow this link:

Cabrillo National Monument Science Programs

Whether you explore tide pools independently or with a ranger, here are some things you might like to have with you:

* Closed-toe shoes with good traction (old sneakers)

* Pants that can be rolled up and warm layers on your upper body

* Sun protection (hat, sunscreen)

* Towel(s)

* Change of socks, shoes, and clothing (just in case you slip in the water)

* A Ziplock bag for your cell phone, if you bring one (not advised for students)

When wading in the tide pools, keep your eyes out for big waves, and avoid turning your back to them. Walk between the rocks rather than stepping on them. If you step on rocks to avoid walking in the water, you could easily slip on algae and really get yourself wet!

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Summertime Science in the Garden: Pollination

Bumblebee visiting gayfeather flowers in my dad's garden in Maine

Summer is a great season to spend time in a garden, and you often receive a little science lesson in the process. I enjoy watching various pollinators at work as they visit flowers. One of my favorites is the bumblebee, which is able to access pollen unavailable to other pollinators. Its secret is buzzing at a specific frequency that causes the flower's anthers to open and release pollen. (To learn more about buzz pollination, see the link at the end of this post to a Science Friday video on this topic.)

I learned about the importance of pollinators the hard way one year when my zucchini plants produced lots of flowers but no zucchini! I discovered that zucchini and other squash flowers are monoecious, meaning they have separate male and female flowers on the same plant. They can't self-pollinate, like some perfect flowers do, but instead rely on pollinators for the flowers to develop into fruits, the zucchini. Pollinators carry pollen from the anthers of a male flower to the stigma of a female flower. You can see these flower parts in the photos below, taken in my plot in the Juniper-Front Community Garden in San Diego.

Male squash flower with pollen-covered anther in the center

Female flower with stigma in the center

Fellow gardeners suggested that I plant some flowers to attract pollinators, and this has been very helpful. I learned that humans can serve as pollinators, too! This is a fun activity to do with kids. To hand pollinate a zucchini or other squash flower, remove the petals from a male squash blossom, and rub its anthers on the stigma of a female flower. One male flower can be used to pollinate multiple female flowers. 

Female blossom- note ovary below petals

Three days later: ovary developing into fruit

Male flower- note absence of ovary below petals

Once the flower has been pollinated, the pollen forms a tube that travels from the stigma down through the style to fertilize the ovules at the base of the pistil, triggering the development of the zucchini fruit. I now use this trick to pollinate my zucchini and spaghetti squash flowers with great success! 

If you enjoy watching pollinators and think you might be interested in helping collect data on pollinators in your area, you can learn about a citizen science project called The Great Sunflower Project in this blog post:

Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

To learn more about buzz pollination, check out this Science Friday video:

Science Friday Video on Buzz Pollination

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Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

 

I discovered a simple yet engaging project that gets students and families outside and allows them to participate in authentic scientific research. The Great Sunflower Project is a citizen science activity in which students and volunteers nationwide observe flowers and record information about the pollinators that visit them. The data that is collected is entered on the project's website and then compiled and used to create maps showing the abundance of pollinators in different areas across the United States.

Data collection for The Great Sunflower Project can happen whenever pollinators are active. Because April is Citizen Science Month, and Earth Day is in April, I chose to have students do this project to celebrate Earth Day. Everyone seems to enjoy getting outside in spring when the weather is getting warmer. 

To prepare students for the project, I created a Google slideshow with some photos of pollinators listed on The Great Sunflower Project data sheet. These included bumblebees, honey bees, and carpenter bees. As I shared the slideshow with the class, I pointed out specific traits of the pollinators that would help to identify them. After receiving this "training", students took a quiz in which they had to identify pollinators from photographs.

The minimum time for observing flowers required by The Great Sunflower Project is five minutes. When doing this project with my middle school students, I asked them to spend between five and fifteen minutes on data collection, depending on the dynamics of the class and how much time was available to us. This may seem like a very short period of time, but staying focused on observations can be very challenging! After seeing students struggle with this in the past, I decided to reinforce the importance and challenge of staying focused on the flowers during the observation time. If you try this with your own students or children, don't be surprised if a few begin to wander a bit from their posts or perhaps need gentle reminders to watch the flowers for pollinators.  

If you are interested in learning more about The Great Sunflower Project, here is a link to a short video and description of the project:

https://www.greatsunflower.org/node/1000010

Here is a link to register:

https://www.greatsunflower.org/user/register

Update: When my students tried to enter data in April, 2022, we noticed that the website was down for a couple of days. I don't know if this happens frequently or not. If you plan to do this project with your students or family, just be aware of this. Despite the delay, students were motivated to contribute their data to a nationwide project!

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