Outdoor Education Commons^™

Shooting Star Flower: Place-Based Learning Plan For The Msum Regional Science Center, Ava Bauch

OER Materials

The lesson plan engages fourth-grade students in a hands-on field experience at the MSUM Regional Science Center located in Moorhead, Minnesota focusing on the Shooting Star flower with the scientific name Dodecatheon meadia. Aligned with Minnesota Science Standard 4L.4.1.1.1, the lesson emphasizes how environmental conditions influence the traits and survival of living organisms. Students begin by observing an image of the flower and generating questions and predictions to spark curiosity. Then explore the natural environment to locate the plant and record observations about its surroundings, structure, and survival strategies. Through guided discussion, students learn how the Shooting Star adapts to …

The Everyday Scientist: Down In The Weeds In The Heart Of The South, Pamela Zendt

Master's Projects

The Everyday Scientist: Down in the Weeds in the Heart of the South is a creative nonfiction capstone project that was released as a book. The narrative documents my two-year journey as a community scientist and explores how ordinary people contribute meaningfully to scientific research in the natural world. Rooted in my desire to connect my passion for the outdoors with the goals of the Master of Arts in Professional Writing program, this project illustrates that environmental science is not only for trained professionals. Instead, it thrives on the curiosity, dedication, and participation of volunteers who follow established protocols, collect …

Climate Change In Mississippi: A Journalistic Exploration Of Education And Activism, Kala Nance

Honors Theses

Climate Change in Mississippi: A Journalistic Exploration of Education and Activism takes an investigative, journalistic approach toward climate change in Mississippi. Specifically, how education and awareness have a direct impact on Mississippi industries, people and legislation. The project explored the level of acknowledgement of climate change across the state, and how certain individuals used advocacy to encourage education about climate change to raise awareness of the severity of the situation. This project includes interviews with university professors and researchers, non-profit organizations, educational groups and working individuals in some of Mississippi’s largest areas of employment. Additionally, this project draws on research …

Diverse Minds, Shared Planet: Designing, Assessing, And Adapting Curricula To Engage Diverse Learners With Their Environment And Inspire Positive Change, Mallory Rose Lampe

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

The pieces that compose this portfolio together explore how environmental education can connect diverse learners to their environment through the integration of accessible curricula to inspire stewardship and action to take care of the planet we share.

Sprouting Systems, Abaigeal Aydt, Cassidy Smith

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

After taking a class at UNL about environmental awareness, two honors students paired up to start a hydroponics club at a local Lincoln school. In reaching out to the LPS director of sustainability, they were paired up with Prescott Elementary School. Over the course of a semester, they developed a club that got a hydroponic grow tower functioning for the school and taught students about nutrition and sustainability. This club is only in its beginning stages, but the impacts that it is making around the school can already be seen.

A Classroom Without Four Walls? Paving The Way For More Outdoor Education, Sandra Anaya-Zamora

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The focus of this Capstone Project is on the need to increase outdoor education opportunities for students. More specifically, how can teachers increase outdoor learning opportunities during instructional time? This is important because a lack of outdoor educational opportunities hinders students from learning benefits only found through their environment. It is argued that a decrease in environmental integration in schools will cause children to lose touch with nature, affecting their development and the future sustainability of our planet. The three primary stakeholder perspectives chosen were one teacher, one science teacher, and one garden-nutrition educator because considerations of the issue should …

Hands Of The Future, Inc.: Connecting Children To Nature, Rebecca Busse

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Rebecca Busse is the project coordinator for the Nature of Teaching Extension Program. This provides K–5 teachers with standards-based lesson plans related to wildlife, food waste, and health and wellness. She has been volunteering with Hands of the Future, Inc., for three years. In this article, she describes the organization and her experiences with it.

Outdoor Educator’S Challenge, Emanuele Corso

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

At a time when the world is crying out for relief from its social and environmental crisis, our response must come in the form of radical departures from “business as usual” in the schools. Misplaced intelligence and well-intentioned ignorance have made American schools like factories.1 With production came dehumanization and its consequences: insensitivity to self, others, and nature. The production view of education persists because of its appeal to those who fear human nature and who have deep needs for social control as well as for proof of status. At this moment, the “in” euphemism for production is “accountability.” Industrial …

Students Afield And Stream, Charles Yaple

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

How can a retired U.S. Postal Service worker connect high school students to the outdoors and get them involved with home community environmental awareness and improvement projects? Recent research findings suggest fewer of today's teenagers value the natural environment as strongly as young people did twenty years ago. It appears athletics, music, dance, theatrics, video games and I pods dominate after school time for most students. "No problem," said grandfather Doug Thornton. Find a few students with at least a spark of interest in the outdoors, start an after school Sportsman's Club and see if the sparks can be fanned …

Review Of Environment And The People In American Cities, James F. Bonilla

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

The Environment and the People in American Cities provides a remarkable historical account of some of America's most well known urban parks. Written by Dorceta Taylor, a professor at the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and the Environment and director of the Multicultural Environmentai Leadership Development Institute, this is the first of three extensive books connecting the history of the environment, diversity and social justice.

Invoking The Spirit, Gary Gardner

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

I would like to make a three-part argument. People of faith and advocates of sustainability are natural allies because the two communities have important common interests, they bring together complementary strengths, and religion adds new value to the effort to build a sustainable world. I will spend most of my time on the last point, and just a little on the first.

Walking Into Wonder, Cynthia Macleod

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

Observant walking is not the kind of walking that most of us usually do, and it may be an entirely new experience for some of our students. Yet learning to walk with awareness can open us to a greater sense of connection with our surroundings and enable us to find joy in the specifics of our life settings. For our students, this personal connection to their immediate place can jump-start a lifetime of care for the environment. Taking class time to help students observe with wonder the world around them can give them a way of seeing the ordinary as …

Water Within Their World, Linda H. Plevyak And Amy Mayfield

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

With the fast pace of life today, many children do not have time to play outside and explore their neighborhoods. When outside, urban children often gravitate to the playground or basketball court not paying attention to the natural environment around them.

This fast pace of life doesn’t stop at the classroom door. Classroom teachers feel more pressure everyday to teach an increasing number of standards adopted by local districts. An unfortunate result of this is that science is too often the last content area to be fit into a busy week’s schedule. This means that more than ever we need …

News Briefs, Coalition For Education In The Outdoors

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

This issue includes various brief articles including:

Cloning sheep in Scotland

Brightest Comet Sighting in 20 Years

Acid Rain Kills Moose

(Review Continued)

News Briefs, Coalition For Education In The Outdoors

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

No abstract provided.

Thoreau's Legacy, Charles Yaple

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

Thoreau believed that human well-being on the personal and cultural level would prosper if individuals planted one foot in natural surroundings and the other in civilization. He saw wildness "as the source of vigor, inspiration, and strength," and "to the extent a culture, or an individual, lost contact with wildness it became weak and dull" (Nash, 1967, p. 88). He cited the breakdown of civilizations (the Roman Empire) as historical evidence of what could happen when humans forgot their origins and source of spiritual, mental, and physical sustenance. What might outdoor educators learn from Thoreau that can help them deal …

News Briefs, Coalition For Education In The Outdoors

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

This section contains multiple brief news items related to conservation, environment or outdoor education.