This week’s work gave me the opportunity to reflect on a project that I am working on with my own students, which involves a year-long inquiry into the question: how are we connected.
While the projects listed on the Web site are all outside of my curricular area of focus, I chose to look more closely at the Pine Creek project where students become explore a local creek, its environment, and ongoing status. This project was particularly interesting to me because it is reflective of the project I am currently working on. As a part of the WISE project, students participate in field trips, acquire data through water testing and observations, apply data to tables, and interpret the data for planning future trips and jobs at the creek. I am most interested in the aspect where students upgrade the quality of the environment around the creek. As a teacher, I am interested in exploring the Bow River, in my own school’s back yard, and will be doing so with the support of an Aboriginal Elder. We will be exploring our historical connection to the land and our current connections to the river. I am interested in extending this work into our sciences and maths as we look at animal habitats and why it might be important that we care for the river here and now to protect those habitats down river and the economic interests in our area.
From here, students have asked questions that have lead us off in the discovery of the people and environment around us and how that connects to the rest of the world. Our project touches on the four tenets of inquiry as noted in ‘Wise design for knowledge integration” in that it makes science readily accessible and reflects on their immediate environment. It takes into account multiple perspectives as we draw on scientists and Aboriginal knowledge keepers. And, finally, it allows students to learn from one another as we have made reflection an important aspect of the project and share through talking circles, visual journals, graphs of data, and close observation of local flora and fauna.
Linn, M., Clark, D., & Slotta, J. (2003). Wise design for knowledge integration. Science Education, 87(4), 517-538.
Thank you for sharing Tracy,
The unit you are working on sounds really exciting. Did you reach out to the aboriginal elder yourself or does you school or district have a relationship with a local band?
There is no substitute for authentic learning opportunities such as you described. I’m curious what you thought of the Pine Creek Project in terms of its potential to promote inquiry and meaningful learning. In what ways do you think it does this and in what ways do you think it may fall Short?
Thanks for your comment Ryan!
I was lucky to be accepted to a professional learning opportunity with an Aboriginal Elder though an application process. As a part of that process, I get to attend several inservice days that include learning about Aboriginal ways of knowing and my school has agreed to engage an Elder to advance this project. It’s very much the result of cumulative efforts… learn a little, reach out and meet new people, learn a little more, reach out to new people. It has been an enormous undertaking in terms of relationship building and taking risks in learning but has been worth every bit of effort.
I am a huge believer in the value of situated, contextual learning and think that the Aboriginal perspective has a lot to teach us in terms of science and maths learning. The Pine Creek Project seems like a very good project in that it involves hands-on science and exploration and students coming to know their environment and science in the service of knowing their environment. My only complaint with it is that it’s outside of my students’ curricular goals as a teacher in a K-6 school. I love the WISE website and think it has a ton to offer for teachers in terms of being inquiry-driven and authentic science but I would like to see the site adapted down to younger learners so that teachers and learners at those levels see how science skills learned even at a young age scaffold into work at a higher level.