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

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

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.

Soils in All the Colors of the Rainbow

A rainbow of soil is under our feet; red as a barn and black as a peat. It’s yellow as lemon and white as the snow; bluish gray. So many colors below. Hidden in darkness as thick as the night; the only rainbow that can form without light. Dig you a pit, or bore you a hole, you’ll find enough colors to well rest your soil.
– A Rainbow of Soil Words by F.D. Hole, 1985

In my introductory post about the Year of Soils, I explained how soils are made up of numerous components, both organic and inorganic. But no two soils are created equal!

Soils vary widely around the world. They can be organized, or classified, based on the variations in these organic and inorganic components. There are a number of different classification systems, including the USDA’s Soil Taxonomy system and the FAO’s World Reference Base for Soil Resources. These systems organize soils based on considerations like their overall texture (the proportions of clay, silt, and sand, which form from the slow breakdown of bedrock), their mineral composition, and the thickness and composition of their layers.

Oh yes…layers! Soil isn’t the same all the way down–it is much more complex! Over time, it goes through complicated processes like leaching, the addition and breakdown of organic matter (humus), and the breakdown of bedrock. The result is these layers:

Regional variations in temperature, rainfall, etc., as well as the composition of the underlying bedrock, result in dramatic differences in these layers. Including their colors! Here in Maryland, for example, much of our soil is a bright orange-red near the surface, due to a type of clay that holds large amounts of iron. This iron oxidizes (rusts) in the presence of oxygen, resulting in this vivid color.

And just as the living soil ecosystem can influence the plant ecosystem growing above, these non-living characteristics have an impact as well. Different plants prefer different soil conditions, including depth, moisture/drainage, pH, and texture, which is one of the reasons why all of the different soil types around the world support such variable plant communities.

Soil testing can be a great way to learn about your soil’s classification and associated characteristics. You can use this information to figure out what kinds of plants will grow best on your land, and if any amendments are needed to improve growing conditions.

Have you ever had your soil tested? What did you learn about your soil?

The Three “E”s to Success: Employees, Education and Engagement

View the webinar

This webinar will offer insights into elements of success essential to strong projects: continual engagement with employees and strong partners; educational support to teach and gather data on your projects; and an understanding of the natural and human community in which you are interacting. Learn how to connect your employees with state-level conservation education resources to develop partnerships that meet your WHC Conservation Certification objectives. You’ll find out how you may use these resources to conduct education and outreach initiatives at your WHC-certified habitat and walk away with a ready-to-use toolkit to encourage engagement.

You’ll learn:

The ready-made lessons in Project Learning Tree (PLT) and how you can obtain them through online or in-person training.
How PLT has been applied to WHC habitat projects with great effectiveness.
How PLT supports conservation goals, as well as local, state and national education standards.
The many resources available to you to apply this flexible curriculum to formal education, training and community engagement, and awareness events.

Presenters:

Michelle Holyfield, Eastman
Jaclyn Stallard, Project Learning Tree
Misty Bowie, Texas Forestry Association

View the webinar

Measuring the Success of Your Conservation Education Projects

View the webinar

Whether it’s a hands-on science activity for students, teacher training, employee instruction, or a citizen science program for the community, all education projects submitted for Conservation Certification must contain an assessment. These assessments not only measure the success of your project, but the data and knowledge collected can be shared internally and externally, and the lessons learned can help make your program stronger.

This webinar will explore the various assessment tools available including:

Observation of new skills acquisition or collaborative learning
Assessing journals entries or student work
Gaining feedback from reflective sessions and other innovative techniques

Presenter:

Thelma Redick, Wildlife Habitat Council

View the webinar

Tag Archive for: 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.

Soils in All the Colors of the Rainbow

Read more WHC blogs.

Tag Archive for: education

The Three “E”s to Success: Employees, Education and Engagement

Measuring the Success of Your Conservation Education Projects

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Tag Archive for: education

Tag Archive for: 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