conservation education Archives - Wildlife Habitat Council

Let’s Go Outside! The Benefits of Learning in the Outdoors

Like most kids, I loved to play outside when I was young. The great outdoors seemed to be filled with limitless potential for exploration and fun, and its ever-changing nature with the weather and turning of the seasons only seemed to expand the possibilities. I could find an adventure or feed my curiosity anywhere from the creek that ran through our neighborhood park to the underside of the yew hedge in my own front yard.

As educators, we can harness kids’ natural enthusiasm for being outdoors with engaging, hands-on lessons based in our local habitat. Being outdoors with plenty of room to explore and play provides kids with an outlet for their energy that indoor classroom settings just do not allow. There are many educational games that are designed to be physically active, like Project WILD’s Oh Deer! This activity offers kids (and willing adults, too) with an opportunity to run around and play while simultaneously learning about the relationships between deer, plants and predators.

The seemingly endless potential of the outdoor environment also naturally lends itself to inquisitiveness, inspiring kids to ask questions and seek answers about what they see, hear, smell, and touch.

Exposure to nature from a young age, particularly repeated exposure, instills kids with an appreciation of nature and a desire to protect it, turning young children into natural conservationists as they grow up. Providing them with opportunities to participate in conservation activities, from planting trees to helping with wildlife monitoring, further instills a conservation ethic in kids by allowing them to see conservation “in action.” Is it any wonder, then, that after years of exploring the natural world as a kid, I grew up to work in conservation, as did so many of my peers?

If you would like to learn more about using the outdoors as a space for conservation education at your facility, check out our webinars on conservation education such as Incorporating Project Learning Tree into Your Educational Projects and Measuring the Success of Your Conservation Education Projects, or email our Strategy and Planning team.

The Importance of Aligning Your Projects with Learning Standards

in WHC Blog

WHC Conservation Certification requires that formal learning projects be aligned with learning standards. But what exactly are learning standards, and why are they important?

Learning standards, also called academic standards, are the standardized benchmarks of quality and excellence in education. The standards for grades K-12 are typically set by the government agency responsible for education, or in some cases are set directly by the school. Undergraduate- and graduate-level classes will also have standards set by the school or professor. Learning standards lay out expectations for the specific information and skills students at each grade level should learn, ensuring that the topics, skills, and rigor for each grade level are age-appropriate.

Learning standards function as goals. They differ from the teacher’s curriculum, which is a detailed plan for day-to-day teaching with specific information about topics, activities, and exams and is designed to meet the goals set by the learning standards for the applicable subject and grade level.

When you align your conservation education activities with learning standards, you are helping ensure that your activities are focusing on the knowledge and skills deemed essential for learners at your audience’s grade level.

Aligning your team’s educational activities with learning standards makes the activities more attractive to teachers and school administrators, who may not want to take time away from classroom activities that are needed to meet standards. Supporting state standards with conservation education activities also provides teachers with a way to engage learners in hands-on, minds-on learning that meets their objectives, and provides students with an outdoor setting where they can gain and practice newfound knowledge and skills.

The best way to ensure your conservation education activities align with learning standards is to coordinate directly with the teachers who will be bringing their students to your site. Working with teachers to develop outdoor, hands-on lessons will help you ensure that those lessons are relevant to what students are learning in the classroom and help meet learning standards. This helps demonstrate to teachers, parents, and school administrators the value of your site’s relationship with the school.

To learn more about the requirements and recommendations for formal learning projects, be sure to read our Formal Learning Project Guidance, or contact strategyandplanning@wildlifehc.org.

Hands-On Means Minds-On

in WHC Blog

When learning is hands-on, it’s also “minds-on.” Consider these words accredited to Dr. Herb True: “Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may remember. But involve me, and I’ll understand.”

In fact, the value of hands-on learning has been understood for millennia. In his collection of philosophical writings, Xunzi, the Confucian scholar Xun Kuang wrote, “Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice.”

At WHC, our model encourages the use of hands-on, minds-on learning whenever possible. This kind of “active learning” helps you engage more deeply with the information or skill at hand. Hands-on learning stimulates all the senses, allowing you to become more fully immersed in the experience and activating more parts of the brain. This makes it easier to recall and synthesize what was learned, as demonstrated by two related 2009 studies that found doodling helped participants better remember the information conveyed during a lecture and enhanced enjoyment and engagement with the material.

Experiencing and participating in an activity first-hand also changes the way you process the information. Hands-on lessons engage learners with real-world applications for classroom concepts, helping them make meaning of these concepts and make connections with their own life. Actively engaging in educational activities therefore promotes critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and team building.

During hands-on educational activities, learning occurs on multiple levels, including visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, and social. Each person may learn better in certain ways than others. By providing experiences that utilize multiple modes of learning, you can more effectively engage as many learners as possible, creating a learning experience that is more inclusive for learners of all types.

If you’re looking for ways to incorporate hands-on education into your conservation program, WHC staff are here to help you. We can show you how to incorporate teacher-designed, hands-on curricula such as Project WILD, Project WET, and Project Learning Tree into your program, or we can even help you design your own curriculum. Get started by emailing us at strategyandplanning@wildlifehc.org.

Saving Bats From Decline

in Awareness and Community Engagement, Bats, Caves and Subterranean, Education & Awareness, Forest, Grasslands, Habitat, Marine Intertidal, Pollinators, Species Management, Species of Concern, Wetlands White Papers

The Corporate Role in Preserving the Ecological and Economic Benefits of Bats
Sponsored by Ontario Power Generation

Bats are a unique group of animals with ecological, economical and cultural significance around the world. They are ubiquitous, with 1,300 species living on every continent but Antarctica. Insectivorous bats save agriculture billions of dollars through predation of a multitude of agricultural pests. Other bats eat fruit and nectar, acting as pollinators and spreading seeds of the fruit they eat, proving essential to the success of many food products like tequila and chocolate, consequently contributing to the global economy. With increased need, heightened interest and accessible technology, now is an opportune time for corporate landowners to engage in bat conservation projects.

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Enhancing Habitat Connectivity Through Corporate Conservation

in Avian, Awareness and Community Engagement, Bats, Caves and Subterranean, Education & Awareness, Forest, Grasslands, Habitat, Integrated Vegetation Management, Invasive Species, Land Conservation Agreements, Mammals, Marine Intertidal, Pollinators, Remediation, Reptiles and Amphibians, Species Management, Species of Concern, Wetlands White Papers

The Private Sector Role in Reconnecting Habitat for Ecosystem Health and Resiliency
Sponsored by Bruce Power

Healthy habitats are necessary for plants and animals to survive and thrive. One measure of the health of a habitat is the degree to which it is isolated from other habitats by land management practices or development, commonly referred to as fragmentation. Fragmentation is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity across the planet, as it can prevent species from moving to hunt, mate, disperse to new areas or escape predators. When corporate landowners engage in ecological connectivity initiatives to reduce fragmentation, they are contributing to landscape-scale efforts that have benefits beyond the corporate footprint and across the entire ecoregion.

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Corporate Citizenship and STEM Education

in Awareness and Community Engagement, Formal Learning White Papers

Creating a Pipeline of Proficiency for a Future Workforce
Sponsored by Freeport-McMoRan

Many companies today choose to use the environment as the integrating concept for STEM, providing learning opportunities through hands-on, outdoors and nature-based activities. These approaches—examples of which are outlined in this white paper—take advantage of the lands on which an operation is located, understand community needs by providing place-based and relevant programs, and meet multiple corporate goals across the spectrum of corporate citizenship efforts.

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Tag Archive for: conservation education

Let’s Go Outside! The Benefits of Learning in the Outdoors

Read more WHC blogs.

The Importance of Aligning Your Projects with Learning Standards

Read more WHC blogs.

Hands-On Means Minds-On

Read more WHC blogs.

Tag Archive for: conservation education

Saving Bats From Decline

Enhancing Habitat Connectivity Through Corporate Conservation

Corporate Citizenship and STEM Education

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Tag Archive for: conservation education

Tag Archive for: conservation education

About

Work With WHC

Learn More

Member

UN Global Compact Business for Nature

Official ally

World Benchmarking Alliance

UN Global Compact
Business for Nature