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Phenology is an excellent way to teach science, technology, and math standards such as inquiry, observation, creating relevant questions, making predictions, graphing and analyzing information, problem solving, conducting basic research, and communication of results.
Image credit:
Lili Gama
Resources for 9-12 Grade Classroom Teachers
Phenology and Nature’s Notebook can also be used to teach subjects other than science.
Phenology can be used to teach:
- English and Language Arts such as reading comprehension, writing, speaking and listening
- Social Studies such as American History, World History, Cultural Studies, and Geography
- Healthy Living and Physical Education
- Foreign and Native Languages including communication, culture, and comparative studies
- Arts such as music, theater, and visual arts
Where do I begin?
Adding a phenological monitoring program to your classroom is easy as long as your project is well-planned. Consider involving other like-minded teachers and staff in your project to make it a meaningful, multi-year experience.
If you can commit to establishing a site at your school for at least 2 years, take a look at our Nature's Notebook Planning Resources to help you get started.
Use Nature's Notebook observations to teach many science topics and prepare students for higher education by exploring critical thinking, careers, research, and scientific inquiry. Have students monitor a set of plants for a semester, or a year. Ask them to generate their own hypotheses, based on evidence of what they've seen, about seasonal and climatic change. If you and the students can continue monitoring for multiple years, ask students to return to the Nature's Notebook data, via visualization tools or excel download, and synthesize what they've seen and learned over the course of their high school career. We encourage people to create groups for monitoring at your school or campus, to which many participants can contribute their own observations.
Consider reaching out to community agencies and organizations and asking them to also monitor phenology. Many local and state government agencies have staff that will help with outreach projects and engage high school students in career choices. Even better if the theme can be phenology!
- Classroom Phenology Project Planning Worksheet (available as word doc)
- Lesson Planning Worksheet (available as word doc)
- Sample teachers workshop with editable powerpoint and activities
- Getting Started with Nature's Notebook in the Classroom
- Questions on how to get started? Contact our Education Coordinator.
- Have ideas or curriculum to share? Let us know and we can post it!
If you can't commit to a long-term monitoring program at your school, consider instead using some of our phenology activities and lesson plans to supplement your student learning. Search the table below for activities appropriate for high school learners.
Nature's Notebook and the Next Generation Science Standards
A long-term, Nature's Notebook phenology monitoring program in the classroom can help address the following Next Generation Science Standards Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI):
More Curriculum Ideas
The table below contains lesson plans and ideas for implementing Nature’s Notebook in Grades 9-12. Implementing phenology monitoring and Nature’s Notebook at the high school level allows students to engage with the content in an experiential way, provides opportunities to do community based projects through partnerships with local organizations, understand the implications of climate change, and engage with scientists performing data analysis.
View Nature's Notebook curriculum materials developed for 9th-12th grades in the table below.
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Climate Drivers of Phenology (Project EDDIE) What climate variables may help explain bumblebee activity? |
This adaptation explores the questions: Based on observations of bumblebee phenology, are bumblebees in the western United States behaving differently from 2011 to 2019? What climate variables may help explain bumblebee activity? |
| The many uses of your Nature's Notebook data |
This set of slides was used in our webinar, The many uses of your Nature's Notebook data, on February 23, 2021. The video recording is available at https://youtu.be/OEIhGA5umEM. The presentation covers a diversity of ways that Nature's Notebook are being used by scientists, natural resource managers, educators, the media. These slides may be used to communicate the value of the data submitted to Nature's Notebook. |
| Visualization Tool Step By Step Instructions |
Use this guide to help walk you through the steps for using the visualization tool. |
| Visualization Tool Step By Step Instructions |
Use this guide to help walk you through the steps for using the visualization tool. |
| Exploring Phenology Data in the Classroom: Plant Phenology Data and Citizen Science |
This activity was designed by Jessica Savage (at University of Minnesota) and Erin O'Connell (at the University of Minnesota), with input from Blake Steiner (University of Arizona, School of Natural Resources) and Claire O'Neill (Earthwise Aware). It guides students through the use of the USA-NPN Visualization Tool to summarize phenology data. Activity learning outcomes:
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