Place-Based Learning: Using Your Location as a Classroom (Transcript)

Dana McCauley: They’re connecting, they’re learning with what’s happening here in their own backyard. They’re constantly engaged in it. They’re thinking about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and how it impacts a bigger picture.

For us, place-based learning is using the environment as the tool, using our place as our tool for learning.

Susan Friend: Here we go. Everybody’s ready.

Dana McCauley: When you use your place everything that the kids are doing becomes relevant and real. They see it, they can put their hands on it. It doesn’t matter if you have stream or woods. It can be in the middle of the city. Just ask the kids, ask the parents, they’ll tell you where all the cool little nooks and crannies are in the neighborhood that you could be utilizing.

Susan Friend: Wetland.

Students: Wetland.

Susan Friend: Hemlock forest.

Students: Hemlock forest.

Susan Friend: What’s in your backyard? What’s in the environmental laboratory that’s out there? Let’s talk about habitat, let’s talk about animals, let’s talk about what your backyard looks like through the seasons, or how’s the meadow different from a forest? How’s that different from a stream?

We need to think about all the places in our backyard that we could set up some scent stations. Get your best sniffer on, line up in front of Mrs. McCauley.

Dana McCauley: So the first one you’re gonna smell is fox urine.

Students: Ew!

Dana McCauley: Are you ready?

Susan Friend: Our scent stations were designed to attract animals and they have molasses, skunk, fox, and beaver, and they all have had lots of sniffs and they decide what scent would be best where.

A trail camera captures images each time it senses motion at the scent station.

Dana McCauley: So if we put the camera here where would we put the scent?

Student: Oo! Right here.

Susan Friend: We get a popsicle stick and a cotton ball and we put the scent on it.

Student: Ew, it looks like pee.

Dana McCauley: Okay, now you need to stick it down in there. Open it up.

Susan Friend: We hang up the camera–

Dana McCauley: Now turn it all the way up.

Susan Friend: And then wait.

Dana McCauley: All right.

Susan Friend: What do you think? Is everybody happy with it?

Students: Yeah.

Susan Friend: And usually in a couple days to a week we come back and we look at the pictures that we got.

Dana McCauley: What do you think we’re gonna see?

Student: Cute!

Another deer!

Wow!

Dana McCauley: Let’s see what else we find.

Student: It looks like a raccoon.

Dana McCauley: Maybe a raccoon.

Susan Friend: Now we’re going into winter, what are some animals that we saw in the fall that we’re not gonna see and where are they? Did they hibernate or migrate?

Student: I think it’s, like, eating something.

Susan Friend: That’s the magic of learning when they don’t even realize all that they’re learning and all that they’re experiencing because they’re just having fun.

Jayden: So if we’re doing something science or social studies we won’t only get out a book and read about it, but we’ll try doing experiments and going down to the stream and we do a lot of taking care of things, especially our trout.

Let’s see how the fish are doing.

Hannah: Well, we are studying how they grow up and what they eat.

Dana McCauley: Doing trout in the classroom fit in perfectly with our place. We have the stream, our kids love to fish, there’s curriculum free on the “Trout in the Classroom” website. We talked to Trout Unlimited and they said, “Absolutely, we’ll help you out any way we can,” and so we said, “Okay, we need a lot of help because we’ve never done this before. Where do we get these eggs?” you know.

Emillie: They came here as eggs, but some of them were already hatched. We put them in the fish tank and then three days later after that we started feeding them fish food.

Hannah: We make sure that their water temperature is right and their water’s healthy enough for them to live in.

Jayden: Looks like it’s 7.4.

Hannah: Yeah, that’s good.

Dana McCauley: Every day they’re collecting the data.

Dana McCauley: So you’ve done the chemical study, now you can do the biological study.

There are parts of the stream ecosystem that make that a good habitat for the fish. What are some of the things that we’re gonna find down there, hopefully, that we’ve had to mimic up here?

Hannah: They eat micro-invertebrates when they’re in the stream and get oxygen from the rocks. It’s kinda like the bubbler in the classroom tank.

Jayden: I love it because we get to release them afterwards.

We make sure that the stream is definitely healthy so that when we release our trout that we know they’re in a healthy place.

Students: Whoa!

Dana McCauley: That stream runs through their backyards. Every day when they’re down there at the stream and they see one they’re gonna wonder, “Is that the one I released?”

Teacher: Nice job.

Susan Friend: That makes learning real. It validates it, it helps them make those connections.

Student: I think it’s a deer.

Dana McCauley: Because I think when you can help kids see the impact they can have in their own little corner of the world then they can make changes in a much more global arena later on.

Jayden: What I want to grow up to do is clean up pollution or anything that’s damaged the world.

Schools That Work

Crellin Elementary School