Educational resources
Overview
We have pulled together a list of activities and ideas of how you can engage students in a conversation about phenology in the classroom. These activities represent a gradient of investment in terms of time and depth of involvement from one time observations to starting your own nature trail. For each activity, we provide a short description along with the Minnesota standards the activity could address.
(1) Observing nature – These are the simplest activities and require the least time investment but can be highly rewarding for children of all ages. They consist of a one-time activity where students use their senses, explore outside and learn about nature.
(2) Nature journaling – This allows students to observe change and see how dynamic the world is around them. It can be as simple as doing leaf rubbings several times a year to see how leaves develop or can involve collecting quantitative data and adding to online databases like Nature’s Notebook. This allows students to observe trends, and discuss phenology and the seasons.
(3) Data analysis – These activities show students how to explore phenology data using online databases and visualization tools. They can learn about making hypotheses and see the impact of climate change on the world around them.
Additional resources:
This was created by the University Minnesota and has inquiry-based curriculum that utilizes citizen science. There is a curriculum on phenology that uses Nature’s Notebook.
The website has activities that are hands-on and computer-based. They also have information how to set up your own phenology garden and lectures that you can used and seminar modules.
Budburst in a phenology based citizen science program. The educator portion of their website is organized by groups: k-4, 5-8, 9-12, and higher education. Each page looks at the requirements that are supposed to be taught to the designated age ranges and connects them to phenology, giving you a sense on how to apply the information to your classrooms.
This was created by the University of Maine to provide resources for understanding and using phenology. The website lists some phenophases, and has a list of webinars and other activities that can be done to include phenology in your classroom.
This is the iNaturalists’ website for teachers. It has information about how to use iNaturalist, an app that allows for the pictures to be taken and uploaded to a biodiversity database. Expert can then check species identification. It can also be used to look at the distribution of the species based on where the pictures have been taken.