Who Am I? Nature Study

There is a big difference in guessing and in drawing a conclusion based on evidence. Inquiry based science education helps students learn to think and to draw conclusions based on evidence. This valuable approach, recommended by the National Educations Standards, does NOT require that all the evidence used for inquiry is collected in person, in the field or laboratory, by the students.

Obviously a hands-on opportunity to collect physical evidence is exciting and engaging, but all too often it is used only for fun and not really used in a way to require clear thinking and use of evidence.The power of the inquiry approach is to learn to use evidence to guide conclusions. In other words, learn the basis for what is known rather than just memorize it. The active part of inquiry is actually the THINKING STEPS not just the "hands on" manipulation of materials.

Where possible, it's a great thing to have students do field observations or work in a laboratory setting. But this limits what they have a chance to observe and to learn. A combination of hands-on data collection and use of established and reliable data from other sources expands students' opportunities and helps them learn as scientists actually do. Even if data-collection is not "hands on" in a physical sense, it is still hands-on in an inquiry sense, with the student leading the search for information. And most importantly, the use of online data can be very actively a "Minds On" approach.

The Animal Identification Challenge Series of lenses provides a fun, simple and introductory way to let students begin to think in terms of inquiry and to answer questions by collecting information rather than only guessing.

Nature materials in the Nature Challenge Series offer a fun and simple approach to inquiry-based science lessons. Each challenge presents one animal and provides clues to its identity. The reader gets to vote their best idea about the identity of the animal, first based on a guess, and again at the end of the challenge, based on the evidence they have seen. It's an enjoyable challenge for the casual reader and for those looking for nature materials for biology science lesson plans.

The Animal Identification Challenge Series of lenses provides a fun, simple and introductory way to let students begin to think in terms of inquiry and to answer questions by collecting information rather than only guessing.

There are some excellent free resources online resources for nature studies and other forms of science education. But not all material online is of equal scientific validity.

From time to time I will provide some links to reliable and useful scientific resources that you can depend on.

For a start, here are links to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, an excellent resource for information on birds and a site of the Smithsonian's American Museum of Natural History that provides interactive data about mammals of North America.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Smithsonian's North American Mammals

If you have favorite sites you recommend, please mention them in the comments section. Photo shown here is a coyote, image from Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, image creative commons 3.0 license.