Picturesque Prairie

This lesson plan can be used across the curriculum. We currently utilize a 65 acre Outdoor Classroom a few miles from our Middle School. The students, myself and another teacher are in charge of keeping the prairie, pond, wetlands and food plots going each year. Some of the projects we are currently doing includes water testing of the pond and wetlands with the students doing all of the testing and then reporting it via our computers. We also are doing a population sampling of plants in the prairie with the students creating spreadsheets on the computer that will be used yearly to check the species and how well they are doing. We do our own seed harvesting and will also keep track of the amount of seeds we have harvested on a yearly basis. After we have done all of these studies on our own prairie including pictures, we will be traveling to a different part of the State of Iowa to study the prairies contained within the Loess Hills.

The students are taken on a two night three day campout at Waubonsie State Park which is located in the Loess Hills. During this campout, the students are involved in many activities including camping, preparing meals, hiking, using gps units to navigate the trails, visiting private prairies, visiting a visitors center with exhibits on the Loess Hills and visiting a wildlife area. The students will have the opportunity to take pictures with a borrowed digital camera or take their own. (We do not have the funds to equip all students with a digital camera or to provide disposable cameras for all students.) Students are to take pictures that relate to what we have been studying about prairies and any other fun pictures they want. Upon return from the camping trip the students create a power point presentation using the pictures that they have taken. This power point will then be presented to the school board, parents and any other interested people. This year we are hoping to add recorded music, interviews with the people we meet and interviews from the students to our presentation.