Creating a Local Field Guide

In this activity, learners survey living organisms near where they live or go to school, and create a local field guide. Learners discover the value of conducting long-term observations of an ecosystem as the best way to understand how all of its parts work together. Working individually or together, learners hunt for organisms under rocks, between bushes, in shaded corners, etc., to identify at least five items in four categories of living organisms, such as birds, plants, and insects and note their characteristics and behaviors. This activity can be found on pages 16-17 of the activity guide. [Activity is publicly available through a web crawler capture on Archive.org.]