Journaling
The use of a journal is highly recommended when undertaking activities on the trail, the graphic design of the trail posts purposely evokes the sense of a field naturalist making notes and observations. This is the underlying sense that we wish to install in STM students.
“A Nature Journal is a place to grow your thoughts, feelings, ideas, activities, observations, and relationship with the natural world. And, it is an opportunity to interpret your inner thoughts out into the natural world and a space where the natural world can flow into you and leave a permanent mark. ”
Natural history field journals, with their easy confluence of art and science, promote a multi-layered conversation with the land.
A journal or notebook is an indispensable tool in all branches of scientific investigation. It is where the researcher records and preserves what has been seen, done, and thought in the course of his or her work. Keeping a science journal sharpens and focuses observational skills and provides reliable documentation of past events. The process of carefully recording observations in a journal forces one to see and take note of things that may otherwise be overlooked. Journaling, as part of a school curriculum, strengthens and refines students’ cognitive skills by teaching them to observe, to become aware of what they have observed with all of their senses, and to exercise their imaginations and critical skills through developing hypotheses to explain what has been observed. Observation is a skill that can be taught and developed.
Many people look casually but do not see the details of what is before them. A scientist must see deeply and recognize subtle differences. Human memory is unreliable. Details of the immediate past slowly slip from mind as they are replaced by more recent events. Memories of emotionally charged events may be vivid, but are not reliable records of data. Keeping a science journal not only sharpens and focuses observational skills, but also provides reliable documentation of past events. Observing deeply through journaling facilitates more than a capacity for scientific thinking. Those who journal, write, and sketch regularly are better learners. They are more connected to their surroundings, develop identities within their community, and gain the ability to look outside of themselves and reflect on their lives. Creating the space for personal expression within a field journal brings students closer to their environment and connects it to the information that they record. In these ways, journaling changes the journaler. Keeping a journal and looking back on thoughts and observations made at an earlier time records progress. For a young student (or anyone, for that matter), this is a powerfully rewarding experience and an opportunity to trace growth.
If you (as a teacher and guide) introduce your students to taking notes in a field journal at the start of the academic year, their books will spin a thread that links the whole year. As he seasons progress, you can record the changes seen in plants and animals around the school. Other notes such as weather and cultural events can also be recorded in their books. Their journals should also become a place for creative writing, scientific observations, and personal reflections. If you encourage your students to write personal material in their journals as in a diary, you can give them the option of folding a page over on itself to indicate that the contents underneath are something that they are not yet ready to share. If they later decide that they do want you to look at the page, they can unfold it and let you know. Field journal projects can also extend into larger classroom projects. One particularly successful project is creating a classroom guide to the plants and animals in your community. Students can illustrate, research, and write-up descriptions and notes about the behavior of local species. All the students’ work can be combined into one volume and photocopied to make books that can be sent home. The possibilities are numerous. Use field journaling as a tool to bring your students
together and create a culture of self-driven learning and community within your classroom. Keeping a field journal develops and reinforces the most important science process skills—observation, questioning, and documentation. All other parts of the process of science depend on these skills. We assume that we are naturally good observers, but learning to really see what is in front of us is a skill that must be learned, developed, and practiced.
JOURNALLING ACTIVITIES
Journaling with students may take many different forms.
Formal Journaling activities: Students are directed to a activity from their teacher or from the content of the audio they have been instructed to listen too. Students will have specific things they are looking for such as the behaviour of birds or insects or presence of nests and other habitats.
Informal Journaling: Useful for extending students observation skills, finding prompts for literacy based tasks or following on from previous focused activities.
Instruct students to always record:
Formal Journaling activities: Students are directed to a activity from their teacher or from the content of the audio they have been instructed to listen too. Students will have specific things they are looking for such as the behaviour of birds or insects or presence of nests and other habitats.
Informal Journaling: Useful for extending students observation skills, finding prompts for literacy based tasks or following on from previous focused activities.
Instruct students to always record:
- time
- date
- weather (temperature, cloudtypes, wind, rain, etc.)
- Bird observer – what birds can you see or hear?
- Bird Behaviour - What are they doing? Interactions
- Bug observer – What bugs can you find?
- Bug Behaviour - What are they doing?
- Leaf hunt - Collect as many different leaves as you can – draw or stick them in your journal
- Leave adaptations – select a leaf and observe its features – what are some reason you can think of that the plant may have those particular features – to conserve water, to resist insect attack?
- Flower Find - Observe plants that are flowering- press a sample or make a drawing – check plant next time you come back – you can now document the flowering times of different plants
- Habitat hunt – could focus on birds or bugs or general – Find homes, describe the features of the homes, are they being use? How?
- Scout out the different colors of the season
- Bug Signs - Look for signs of insects – galls, leaf miners and leaf rollers.
- Animal Traces – look for signs of animals, possum, bats, etc, you may find scratch marks on trees, scats(droppings) or even skeletons.
- Plant focus – focus on a group of plants at a time – ground storey vegetation (everything less than knee high) – shrub layer (knee high to 2m) and tree layer (greater than 2m) – may do over a series of days, compare the biodiversity(number of species) in each group. Don’t need to know the species just the number of different plants you can find in each group – could graph.
- Season Observations – make a journal entry for each season, record temperatures
- Leaf litter search – observe all you can see in a small area of the ground – chose another area and do the same
- Weed hunt – can you guess which plants are weeds – make some observations and record why you think it’s a weed
Benefits of Greentime Research
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