Fourth Grade Participates in Nationwide “Square of Life” Program

At Powhatan School we use an approach called N.E.A.L. (Nature Enhanced Approach to Learning). In science, using nature while studying life sciences in the fourth grade is a perfect fit. Our students do this by making repeated visits to carefully chosen sites on the Powhatan nature trail throughout the school year.

Each team of three or four staked out a one-square-meter “Square of Life,” and marked it off with twine. Using careful observations in the fall, the students catalog all the living and non-living things they see in the “square.” Again, using scientific methods of classifying these things, they make careful notes in their Science Notebooks.

We are sharing our pictures, data, and videos with a nation-wide network of other schools who are doing the same project. It’s fascinating to see how an urban school in Los Angeles and a rural school in Maine might produce results that are similar and different from ours, often in unexpected ways.

Today, students were to make a detailed sketch of the things that would fit underneath their clip boards, then they made a “key” to list each item and label them so others could understand their sketches. These sketches will be knitted together to make a team picture of their square in the fall. Each successive season will yield another team-produced picture, noting any changes each time.

Just getting to the squares is fun on our nature trail! It’s hard to slow them down and not scare up a nest of yellow jackets we found on an earlier visit. Once there, as the video shows, each student works from their own corner of their square, carefully sketching their area. Working cooperatively like this is an essential part of the real world of science, where data are shared, compared, and discussed by many scientists from several sites.

We ended the experience with a mimed game to allow our highly kinesthetic learners to share their inspiration in a fun way!

We are sharing our pictures, data, and videos with a nation-wide network of other schools who are doing the same project. It’s fascinating to see how an urban school in Los Angeles and a rural school in Maine might produce results that are similar and different from ours, often in unexpected ways. As a happy by-product, we make friends from far away, too!