Introduction to the Nature Journal

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Title:

Introduction to the Nature Journal

Url:

https://learninglab.si.edu/collections/introduction-to-the-nature-jour...

Publisher:

Smithsonian Office of Education

Description: This Smithsonian in Your Classroom is the third in a three-part series that brings together writing and other disciplines. In the lessons here, students exercise the observation skills that are essential to writing, visual art, and science. First, they try to use evocative language in describing pictures of birds from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. They go on to record observations and to make hypotheses as they follow the behavior of animals on the National Zoo’s live webcams. They can watch the giant pandas, the tigers, the cheetahs, the gorillas, or any of a dozen other species.

These classroom activities are intended as a preface or complement to a project increasingly popular in elementary and middle schools—the keeping of nature journals, whether on class outings or when the students are on their own. Included in the issue are words of advice for students from journal-keeping Smithsonian naturalists.

The term nature journal seems to resist definition until we realize that the broadest definitions all apply. In Keeping a Nature Journal, the most popular recent book on the subject, Clare Walker Leslie puts it simply: “whereas a diary or personal journal records your feelings toward yourself and others, a nature journal primarily records your responses to and reflections about the world of nature around you.”

With a subject as great as all outdoors, nature journals lend themselves to a wide range of expression. Sketches are often the most immediate way to capture the way things look. Deeper, written observations can be the basis for all kinds of creative writing.

LC Classification:

Bibliography. Library science. Information resources (General) -- Subject bibliography -- Periodicals, newspapers, and other serials -- Journalism
Education -- Theory and practice of education -- Elementary or public school education. Elementary school teaching -- Special branches -- Nature study. Science
Education -- Theory and practice of education -- Elementary or public school education. Elementary school teaching -- Special branches -- Nature study. Science -- General works

GEM Subject:

Science -- Instructional issues
Science -- Informal education
Science -- Natural history

Resource Type:

Collection
Reference Material
Instructional Material
Instructional Material -- Interactive Simulation

Format:

Document -- HTML

Audience:

Educator
Learner

Education Level:

High School
Middle School
Elementary School

Language:

English

Access Rights:

Free access

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Source:

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