5TH GRADE

The Aves Compartidas Environmental Education 5th-grade team created a series of five lesson plans and one field trip that focus on wetland birds migrating between Oregon, USA, and Guanajuato, MX. An introductory lesson and four-week-long interdisciplinary project help students become experts on one of the migratory birds shared between the Willamette and Laja watersheds, and the program finishes off with a field trip to bring all their newly acquired skills into the real world. 

The Aves Compartidas 5th-grade curriculum engages students with local ecosystems and cultivates personal connections that help build environmental stewardship through environmental education. Environmental education is a nuanced pedagogy that offers students the freedom to make real-time connections, utilize all their senses for observation, and follow their curiosity. Each lesson helps develop a strong foundation of research skills and scientific inquiry through project-based learning. Over five weeks, students learn research techniques, collaborate with their peers, and improve problem-solving tactics and time management skills as they create a poster about their own wetland bird. Developing these skills is crucial for students as they prepare to enter middle school, where self-directed and group projects are common. Through a long-term structured project, instructors measure how learning outcomes impact students and assess the overall success of the program.

These lesson plans include vocabulary in Spanish and English and a poster activity that incorporates visual, audio, and artistic means of learning. ​The 5th-grade curriculum focuses on supporting learning through connections to language arts, social science, geography, science, Spanish, and visual art.