Everglades National Park ROYAL PALM AND LONG PINE KEY GUIDE

In Your Classroom

Predict, Observe, Explain (POE)

The POE technique can be used in the classroom to predict what wildlife you will see on your field trip and in what habitats different animals will be found. (You should record your predictions on the board or in notebooks.) Observations can be made during the trip, and then discussed afterwards. Were the original predictions accurate? Ask the students to explain. Can they make predictions about wildlife activity at different times of the day and year? How about the future? Will habitats and wildlife populations change?

Role Playing

Role playing activities are especially powerful for 5th and 6th graders. They are willing to assume both human and animal roles. The Everglades Activity Guide for Teachers includes several role playing scripts, but creating your own with your class takes learning another step.

Plant and Wildlife Identification

Classification and identification are fundamental ecology skills. A variety of excellent materials focused on these topics have been designed for 4th-6th graders. Check your school media center. The inexpensive bird and plant identification cards from the Florida National Parks and Monuments Association will be available at the park in your back pack. However, some pre-visit classroom practice in describing a bird's beak, a leaf's shape, or the color of a fish, will prepare your students to amaze themselves in the field.

Park rangers have observed that students who do reports before the field trip on specific plants and animals are our most enthusiastic participants.

Literature, History and Storytelling

Heroes are very important to 4th-6th graders. Biographies of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, Rachel Carson, John Muir and other conservation figures are available for this age level. Other books such as The Lorax by Dr. Suess (see Unit III of the Everglades Activity Guide for Teachers) have themes that relate directly to parks and wildlife. The rich body of Native American literature and storytelling, found for example in Keepers of the Earth by Michael Caduto and Joseph Bruchac, provides imaginative multi-cultural material. Finally, a visit to the relatively unchanged park landscape makes an excellent tie-in to aspects of Florida's history and settlement. See pages 20-22 of this guide, for materials to support these types of classroom approaches.

Reflective Thinking

Research shows that students must be given an opportunity to assimilate what they've learned, and to move information to long-term memory. Many teachers use writing assignments as a post-field trip reflective exercise. Rangers are always pleased to receive letters (or copies of letters) from students. Such materials allow us to assess the effectiveness of our programs. Writing letters to elected officials is a reflective classroom activity that reinforces the concept that national parks belong to all citizens. Art projects or writing poetry (see Sawgrass Poems by Frank Asch) allow students to express the powerful affective experience they often have when they visit the park. These projects can be shared in a variety of forums.

Videos and Other Visual Materials

The video Kids Explore the Everglades was distributed in 1992 to school media centers. It examines some of the aspects of wildlife science research in Everglades National Park. Adventure in the Everglades, a video which reviews the park habitats, was distributed to 4th grade teachers in 1996 as part of the Children Are the Future of the Everglades curriculum kit. If your students haven't seen it, you may be able to borrow a copy from a 4th grade teacher. (This curriculum kit, along with several videos, posters, and other visual materials are available for purchase from the Florida National Parks and Monuments Association, see pages 20-22.)

Popular magazines include a surprising number of wildlife and habitat pictures that can be recycled into class projects and serve as the starting point for related discussions. Park visuals are especially common in advertising, a testimony to the sometimes subconscious value we give natural areas. Collecting advertisements featuring animals and nature can serve both as a basis for both social science and science lessons.

Visual materials about national parks, including Everglades, are now available on the Internet, and these materials will be expanding greatly in the near future. The Everglades web page address is http://www.nps.gov/ever/home.htm. Consider using the net to arrange an exchange of Everglades posters or postcards with a school near another national park area.