Let's create continuous conversations about climate change education: Spreading the Sediment of Science!
Colors of Place Systems Thinking Activity
Provided by: Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation
Activity - Outdoors Grades 3-5, 6-8
Synopsis
- In this activity, students will make observations of an outdoor location, find something to match their assigned color, and think about how it relates to other objects in the ecosystem.
- Students will understand how living and nonliving objects work together in a system, draw their object, make a diagram of the system interactions, and discuss or write their answers to the questions.
Subjects: Biology, Earth and Space Sciences
Authors: Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation
Region: Global
Languages: English
Teaching Materials
Positives
- Students will love getting outside in a natural system.
- Allowing students to choose their paint chip color can give them a sense of autonomy.
Additional Prerequisites
- The lesson says it is for grades K-12, but the activity will likely work best for grades 3-8.
- Teachers should prepare students to go outside and observe a natural system without disturbing or hurting it.
- Students will need to know the five senses.
Differentiation
- Before doing this activity, students can create nature journals. Then, after completing the activity, students can put their paint chip and a drawing or picture of their object in their journals.
- After answering the reflection questions, students can discuss how human activities and climate change impact the community and systems they have observed.
- During Part 2 of the lesson, teachers can draw a system web as they identify how each object is connected to the other.
- Students in language arts classes can practice their descriptive writing skills by using imagery to describe the system they observed.
Scientist Notes
Teaching Tips
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Resource Type and Format
About the Partner Provider
Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation
The Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation (CELF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2003 with the mission to make Education for Sustainability (EfS) an integral part of every child's K-12 learning experience. CELF engages educators, students and community leaders through award-winning programs that are designed to succeed in a wide range of education settings, including multi-day Summer Institutes, school professional development workshops, custom curriculum and instruction consulting, green career speaker series, and outdoor learning experiences. CELF's programs aim to help cultivate a society of global citizens with deep understanding of the dynamic interdependencies among human systems nested within natural systems, and the critical role education plays in cultivating healthy, equitable communities in a changing climate.
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