EUSD and Coastal Roots Farm are pleased to provide every 4th grade student with an outdoor education experience aligned to NGSS and California's Environmental Principles and Concepts. Students will participate in pre lessons to prepare their eyes and minds for their in-person fieldwork experience. After the in-person fieldwork, students and teachers will participate in a follow-up lesson and conservation project.
We are excited to announce that this field trip now has a project based learning unit you can choose to use to help extend the learning for this field work opportunity at Coastal Roots Farm. This comprehensive unit embeds the Pre-Lessons, Post-Lessons, and Conservation Project while also encouraging in depth inquiry, collaboration, and real-world phenomena. While completing the pre, post, and Conservation project is required for this field work partnership, this PBL unit is optional. We hoped to provide you with an opportunity to utilize a project based approach in your classroom. This PBL was written in collaboration with Coastal Roots Farm and EUSD.
Begin Farmer Training: Seed planting activity and tracking the plant's growth
Plant Defenses: Just like animals, plants have features that help them grow and survive. Learn about plant parts that help defend the plant from harm and design our very own defensive plant.
Field Trip Schedule
Field Trip Preparation
Student Expectations
Farm Contacts
Field Trip Reflection: Students will reflect on their learning from the farm and participate in an engineering design challenge to design a trellis for their pea plants.
Call to Action! Students will design a home for an animal on the Farm that helps farmers with pest control or plant health.
Collaborative teams can choose to create:
Engineer a physical prototype
Design a model
Create a digital blueprint
Post-Experience Student Survey and Teacher Survey
4-LS1-1 From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes - Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
3-5-ETS1-1: Engineering Design - Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
EP&C Principle I. People Depend on Natural Systems
Concept A - The goods produced by natural systems are essential to human life and to the functioning of our economies and cultures.
EP&C Principle III. Natural Systems Change in Ways the People Benefit From and Can Influence
Concept B. Human practices depend upon and benefit from the cycles and processes that operate within natural systems.
Conecpt C. Human practices can alter the cycles and processes that operate within natural systems.