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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 |
|---|---|
| Logic Model Worksheet |
Logic Models help you plan and execute a program and provide a framework for evaluating your success. Before you begin a Nature's Notebook Phenology Monitoring Program, consider doing a Needs Assessment to determine if a Nature's Notebook is something that will be useful to you. Once you've completed that process, you can begin to plan your program using one of our Program Planning Worksheets. Finally, once your plan is drafted, you can create for yourself measurable goals that can be tracked and shared with all of your stakeholders and funders. Use one of these logic model templates to document what you'd like to achieve. We've included a tabular model and a linear model. Both contain the same elements but the tabluar model is for those who prefer to work with visual representations and the linear model is for those who work better with outlines in text. USA-NPN Education Resource Number: 2017-001-C |
| Needs Assessment Worksheet |
Needs assessments are an important element of developing a site-based long-term phenology monitoring program. Thinking through the reasons you wish to utilize Nature’s Notebook for natural resource management, scientific, or educational purposes will help you to develop something sustainable. Even better would be to identify researchers, land managers, educators, or outreach providers in your community to collaborate on a monitoring program. If you are a researcher or land manager, reach out to educators who can help you recruit and train people to collect the data you need to answer your questions and make better decisions. If you are an educator, find a researcher or land manager who may find data you collect with your participants of value. For more information about the process and to share your form with the National Coordinating Staff, visit the Needs Assessment webpage. USA-NPN Education Resource Number: 2017-002-C |
| Short Introductory Slide Decks |
This series of introductory slide decks can be edited for your use in Nature's Notebook workshops or other presentations. Voice-over videos of the slide decks can be found here. USA-NPN Education Resource Number: 2016-001-W |
| Basic Botany & Intensity Quizzes |
This is an interactive, online series of quizzes designed to help you better identify phenophases and understand the intensity protocols contained within Nature's Notebook. USA-NPN Education Resource Number: 2016-002-OC |
| How to use the Observation Deck's Phenology Calendars |
Learn how to customize your own Phenology Calendars that appear on your Observation Deck. These calanders visually represent data you have collected and allow you to compare up to three species' phenophases at a time. They can be saved as a file, or set to automatically load each time you come to your Observation Deck. USA-NPN Education Resource Number: 2016-004-T |