ELF - Envi­ron­men­tal Learn­ing for the Future | 2011 — 2012

WHAT IS ELF? Environmental Learn­ing for the Future is an edu­ca­tional pro­gram devel­oped to pro­mote an under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of the nat­ural world and increase envi­ron­men­tal lit­er­acy. We hope to encour­age chil­drens curios­ity and con­cern about the nat­ural world and to pro­vide hands-on expe­ri­ences for learn­ing. ELF encom­passes five dif­fer­ent year-long con­cepts: Cycles, Habi­tats, Adap­ta­tions, Designs of Nature, and Earth and Sky. ELF has been piloted in class­rooms here at Mitchell with great reviews. It has also been very suc­cess­ful for the past 13 years at our neigh­bor­ing school: Kyf­fin Ele­men­tary, where they have a tremen­dous amount of par­ent and teacher sup­port. We are hop­ing to repeat the suc­cess of the pro­gram at Mitchell.  See what ELF is all about.

WHO CAN HELP? Look­ing for enthu­si­as­tic par­ents, grand­par­ents, fam­ily friends, com­mu­nity vol­un­teers who would enjoy going into a class­room for hands on teach­ing. Train­ing and mate­ri­als are pro­vided. We need at least three vol­un­teers per classroom!

Adap­ta­tions is our topic for the 2011–2012 school year.

Adap­ta­tions are char­ac­ter­is­tics that develop over time (hun­dreds of thou­sands of years) to give a plant or ani­mal a bet­ter chance to sur­vive in its environment.

Adap­ta­tion is, first of all, a process, rather than a phys­i­cal part of a body. All adap­ta­tions help organ­isms sur­vive in their own eco­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment. These adap­tive traits may be struc­tural, behav­ioral or phys­i­o­log­i­cal. Struc­tural adap­ta­tions are phys­i­cal fea­tures of an organ­ism (shape, body cov­er­ing, arma­ment, etc.). Adap­ta­tions of behav­ior are com­posed of inher­ited behav­ior chains and/or the abil­ity to learn: behav­iors may be inher­ited in detail (instincts), or a ten­dency for learn­ing may be inher­ited (search­ing for food, mat­ing, vocal­iza­tions, etc.). Phys­i­o­log­i­cal adap­ta­tions per­mit the organ­ism to per­form spe­cial func­tions (mak­ing venom, secret­ing slime, etc.); but also more gen­eral func­tions such as growth and devel­op­ment, tem­per­a­ture reg­u­la­tion, etc. Adap­ta­tion, then, affects all aspects of the life of an organism.

Our first unit focuses on Seed Dis­per­sal. Seeds have many adap­ta­tions that help them travel away from their par­ent plants to new loca­tions. Of course there will be lots of hands on obser­va­tion of a wide vari­ety of seeds and seed bear­ing struc­tures for our stu­dents and vol­un­teers. We’ll also ven­ture out­doors to see what we can see on the school grounds: a “seek­ing seeds” scav­enger hunt. ELF will also allow for the stu­dents to test how far a seed might travel in wind (with some help). Exam­in­ing the indi­vid­ual parts of a seed and learn­ing about seeds through “edi­ble activ­i­ties” will also teach with our tra­di­tional hands on ELF learning.

Next we’ll dis­cuss Teeth and Skulls - dif­fer­ent types of teeth are adapted to grasp, hold, and chew dif­fer­ent kinds of food. Exam­in­ing the kinds of teeth an ani­mal has and the shape of it’s jaw and skull gives clues about its life and the food it eats. We’re going to be made aware of the dif­fer­ent kinds of teeth humans and ani­mals have and how they are used. We’ll be com­par­ing the dif­fer­ent kinds of teeth belong­ing to dif­fer­ent mam­mals. Stu­dents and vol­un­teers should also look for­ward to focus­ing on the major classes of ani­mal diet types (car­ni­vore, omni­vore, her­bi­vore and insec­ti­vore) and the rela­tion­ship between ani­mals’ teeth/skulls and the foods they eat. Of course we’ll have lots of teeth and skulls for hands-on explo­ration and com­par­ing and con­trast­ing. AND! We’re even going to design a set of teeth that are adapted to fit a par­tic­u­lar ani­mals diet.

In the begin­ning of 2012, we’ll dis­cuss the adap­ta­tions in the Hunter-Hunted world. Ani­mals that hunt other ani­mals for food (preda­tors), and the ani­mals that they hunt (prey) each have spe­cial adap­ta­tions that help them to sur­vive the chal­lenges of their par­tic­u­lar roles. Preda­tors and Prey also keep one another in check to main­tain the bal­ance of nature. This is an excel­lent unit to fol­low Teeth and Skulls, since many adap­ta­tions of teeth and skulls relate to the ani­mals’ diet. We’re going to iden­tify sur­vival adap­ta­tions spe­cific to preda­tors and to prey and note adap­ta­tions com­mon to both. We’ll also cover the vari­ety of hunt­ing and escap­ing strate­gies and sim­u­late the roles of both predator/prey through a game of track­ing and uncov­er­ing hid­den food. Our cre­ative stu­dents will enjoy cre­at­ing and describ­ing a preda­tor that is adapted to catch a spe­cific prey — a superhunter!

Our fourth sec­tion will dis­cuss Birds, Feet and Feath­ers. Birds have excep­tional adap­ta­tions that enable them to fly, keep warm and pro­cure food. We’ll exam­ine the adapted struc­tures and uses of birds’ feath­ers and feet as well as explore how a birds’ beak and feet are designed to work together to help it eat and sur­vive. Stu­dents and vol­un­teers will learn about beak adap­ta­tions by com­par­ing how well dif­fer­ent shaped uten­sils work to pick up dif­fer­ent foods; and of course we’ll try to head out­side to observe our feath­ered friends in the wild and notice their spe­cial adap­ta­tions. The most excit­ing part of this unit is the dis­sec­tion of owl pel­lets — where we’ll dis­cover what owls eat by exam­in­ing the con­tents of owl pel­lets and we’ll also learn how owls eat and digest their food.

Lastly, we’re going to present Thorns and Threats to the stu­dents of Mitchell. To pro­tect them­selves, plants and ani­mals have devel­oped many dif­fer­ent defen­sive adap­ta­tions. Stu­dents and vol­un­teers will exam­ine defense strate­gies of plants and ani­mals by observ­ing the adap­tions dis­played in a vari­ety of sam­ples (thorny twigs, antlers, a tur­tle shell, and much more).Outdoors we’ll try to observe ways in which local plants make them­selves less edi­ble or dis­taste­ful. We’re going to have a pan­tomime parade per­for­mance cen­ter where stu­dents will act out the was some plant and ani­mal defense strate­gies work. We’ll be iden­ti­fy­ing defense strate­gies that plants and ani­mals have in com­mon as well as review defense adap­ta­tions by encour­ag­ing our stu­dents imag­i­na­tion to outdo nature.

ELF Ses­sions 2011–2012

See when your child’s class will par­tic­i­pate in ELF