Lessons

Part II: Water Issues & Culminating Project

Part II of the project includes 12 individual lessons. Students continued working with the EekoWorld website during this half of the project. Additionally, they learned about the water cycle and the Florida Aquifer and visited the local wastewater treatment plant. As a culminating project, students planted a garden on the school premises.

Part I: Schoolyard Ecology and Recycling

Part I of the project includes 13 individual lessons. During this time, students had an opportunity to become familiar with the EekoWorld website, get involved in a school-wide recycling project, and explore ecology through their schoolyard.

This plan was developed for a 4th grade after-school class that met for 1.5 hours twice a week for 25 days. There was a lead teacher and a teacher’s assistant present at each class.

Wild Words for Wild Wings

Through classroom presentations with permanently disabled birds, birding field trips to the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge and Wakulla Springs State Park, building nest boxes, owl-pellet dissections, and a student presentation of a collaborative, student-created "Guide to the Birds at St. Marks," this project provides fourth grade students with engaging interdisciplinary instructional activities which focus on both resident and migratory bird species at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge and the habitats we share.

Sandy Beck, Education Director, worked with the 4th grade students at Oak Ridge Elementary School who were involved in the EekoWorld project once a week for 4 months.

Read the poem they created.

Visit Sandy Beck's website.