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Outdoor Laboratory Gets Students Close to Nature at McNair Elementary
NATURE LAB: Tyler Kampen, Nytel Gilmore and Collin Goodwin, fourth-grade students at McNair Elementary School, work with teacher Linda Kain, right, during an outdoor science lab in the building’s center courtyard.
Fourth grade students at McNair Elementary School in the Hazelwood School District spread out in groups of three and four around the courtyard, notebooks in hand and monoculars at the ready.
Using the building’s center courtyard, which resembles a small slice of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, the student groups worked in different areas, observing the plants and animals they saw and recording observations in their notebooks.
Under the direction of teacher Linda Kain, these students participated in a new, District-wide science curriculum called, “Nature Unleashed.” Kain had the students observe and record living and non-living things for about 15 minutes and near the end of the period, she gathered the group at picnic tables to discuss their work. Kain teaches Nature Unleashed once a week, usually on Fridays.
“This is the best learning lab,” Kain said of the courtyard, which features a small pond with a fountain in the center with varieties of trees, plants, flowers and shrubs at its margins, where it adjoins the building. “The lesson focused on student teams identifying living things, then categorizing what they observed as either an organism, a population, or a community, then explain the relationships between the living and non-living things as part of an ecosystem,” she explained. “
“This is an opportunity for students to discover change in an ecosystem over a period of time,” Kain said of the science unit. “What benefits them is to record what they see – flowers blooming, other plants, crawling and flying insects, and then connect how living and nonliving things interact to survive. They can identify some of the flowers and plants, other ones they can’t. Students are starting to have more respect for the environment now when they go outside, thanks to what they learn here.”
Kain said SSD teacher Sandy Wilson and her teacher assistant Vanneata Lyons have spearheaded the improvements and have done the majority of the work improving the courtyard. Also, one of the custodians, Robin Cima, has been very supportive, Kain said.
The Missouri Department of Conservation provided $1,000 grants for materials to implement the Nature Unleashed science curriculum at every HSD elementary school and $1,000 grants to implement the Conserving Missouri’s Aquatic Ecosystem science curriculum at every HSD middle school.
