Take a Walk

Is it possible for your students to learn as much moving around as they do sitting in their seats? Movement doesn't always have to happen in the classroom. In fact, taking a walk with your students can be just as educational as reading a book. Consider the following walks, differentiated by two subject areas.

Can you come up with some of your own? Email them to me at jenna@inspiredteaching.org and I'll share them next week.

Science:

• Protecting the school environment - have students create ongoing experiments they'll use to track pollution in their school community. Once a month take a walk around the school to check the progress of the experiments (for instance, they may be monitoring the amount of trash on the playground, or collecting air samples using strips of paper and Vaseline). You may have students then devise action steps they can take to change their data (arranging a school clean-up day, planting trees, etc.)
• Botany on the block - Take a walk around the block with students and have them collect plant samples that they later identify using reference guides and the internet.
  
• Chemistry in the Cafeteria - Have students spend some time observing the various activities in the Cafeteria kitchen - then have them generate a list of all the chemical events taking place in that space. Take this a step further and have them choose an event to study and explain (how dish detergent works, what happens to the chemical make-up of corn when you cook it, what changes occur in meat when it goes from being frozen to fried, etc.)

Social Studies:

• Who are the historians in your neighborhood? - Take a walk around the school and interview residents in the neighborhood, create a history of the neighborhood based on the stories collected from these walks.
  
• What can architecture teach you? - Find a knowledgeable architect/building historian who can take your students on a tour of the neighborhood and explain the significance on the buildings around the school.