Schoolyard Biodiversity Investigation Educator Guide
The Schoolyard Biodiversity Investigation provides students with the opportunity to learn about biodiversity in a tangible and available environment – their own schoolyard. Whether the campus is a sea of cement and grass or contains a diverse garden or forest, the opportunity for students to investigate first-hand will deepen their understanding of biodiversity, ways to measure it, and the impact people have on it. After looking at their schoolyards, students can then apply their newly-gained knowledge to understand biodiversity and its deeper issues in their local habitats, as well as in far-reaching places. The Schoolyard Biodiversity Guide builds upon student’s field investigation skills, including formulating a hypothesis, designing and implementing an investigation, analyzing data and developing conclusions. For more information, please see the Pacific Education Institute’s Field Investigations: Using Outdoor Environments to Foster Student Learning of Scientific Processes. A downloadable pdf is available at: http://www.pacificeducationinstitute.org/resources/research/.
