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The Kids Into Discovering Science (KiDS) curriculum, designed for 5th grade students, includes 10 classroom lesson plans and one field trip lesson plan centered on a plant science experiment. Over 10 lessons and a field day, students practice observation, set up and monitor an experiment, analyze and present their data, and learn about plant ecology, soil ecology, habitats, and their local environments. Students gain an understanding of many ecological concepts, get experience with the scientific process, and develop a sense of place. The curriculum emphasizes local ecology in Lake County, CA, but is written such that its structure or individual lessons may be adapted to other locations and ecosystems.
Associated files
Temporal and geographic description This curriculum was designed for Lake County, California, but notes throughout the curriculum provide suggestions for adapting to other locations.
Format
Primary or BEN resource type
Secondary resource type
General Biology Core Concepts
Discipline Specific Core Concepts
General Biology Competencies
Life science discipline (subject)
Keywords plants, soils, place-based education, scientific process, seeds, serpentine
Audience
Intended End User Role
Language
Educational Language
Pedagogical Use Category
Pedagogical Use Description This curriculum is intended to be used as an ongoing program over 10+ weeks to teach scientific process and local ecology. It was designed for use in Northern California, with lessons taught by graduate and undergraduate student volunteer instructors visiting a rural elementary school in a nearby region once a week. However, we encourage people to adapt our curriculum and framework so that it suits their setting, audience, curricular requirements, and logistical constraints. Many lessons or the general framework can be adapted to different systems and lessons can be adapted to stand alone or as subsets of the full curriculum. We provide a section of the Curriculum Overview as well as "Adapt This!" boxes throughout the lesson plans with our suggestions for tailoring the curriculum to your needs. Indeed, we hope that you will adapt the curriculum in ways that centers the local ecology in the location where the curriculum is taught.

We suggest that you begin with the Curriculum Overview and/or the PDF of the overview and the lesson plans (AllLessons document) to get a sense for the curriculum as a whole and what each lesson contains.
Uniqueness This curriculum includes 10 classroom and 1 field-based lessons that fit together to teach the scientific process, plant ecology, and place-based ecology to late elementary or early middle-school aged students. We provide here all of the lesson plans, along with a program framework and suggestions for adapting the program's lessons or the entire program structure to other systems while maintaining the place-based ecology emphasis.
Aggregation Level
Structure
Full Name of Primary Author Alexandra Weill
Primary Author Controlled Name
Primary Author Affiliation University of California, Davis
Primary Author email amweill@ucdavis.edu
Secondary Author Name(s) Barbara Fernandez, Maureen Stanton, Stella Copeland, Carmen Cortez, Lauren Camp, Jan Ng, Kara Moore
Added By Id
  • alweill
Submitter Name Alexandra Weill
Submitter Email amweill@ucdavis.edu
Rights The KiDS program is available for free and open use and adaptation. We ask that you credit the authors and program if you use our work.
License
Publisher
Review type
Drought and Water Ecosystem Services Collection Off
Conservation Targets Under Global Change Collection Off
Big Data Collection Off
Editors Choice No
Resource Status
Date Of Record Submission 2016-09-10
I Agree to EcoEdDL's Copyright Policy & Terms of Use No
Date Of Record Release 2017-11-09 19:04:16
Last Modified By Id
  • tmourad
Date Last Modified 2017-11-09 19:04:16
Release Flag Published

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