Greetings from Journey North, a science, math, technology, and geography project supported by Annenberg Media. Below you’ll find an announcement about our free online studies for K-12 classrooms. Please share it with educators in your network.

Free Online Project: Students Track Seasons, Animal Migrations

Teachers and students in K-12 classrooms are invited to participate this fall in Journey North’s 14th global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change. One of the nation’s premier Internet-based “citizen science” projects, Journey North enables students in 11,000 schools to track the seasons on a real-time basis. Students follow the migration patterns of monarch butterflies, bald eagles, whooping cranes, and other animals; the budding of plants, changing sunlight, and other natural events. They share their own field observations with classmates across North America and analyze data from other classroom and professional scientists.Each Journey North study features many entry points and resources that address learning standards: Journey North for Kids reading booklets and lessons with stunning photos and video clips, weekly migration updates, interactive maps, connections with field scientists, and compelling migration “stories.” The studies help students fit local observations and inquiries into a global context.

Thanks to a grant from Annenberg Media, Journey North Web site access and participation is free. Visit the Journey North Web site for details: www.learner.org/jnorth.

Fall Journey North Studies

Check the Web site for fall start dates and a list of spring studies that start in late January:Monarch Migration – Students track the remarkable monarch migration to Mexico each fall by reporting observations and collecting reports of the first sightings of southbound monarch butterflies. Each week a migration map shows a “live” snapshot and animation of the migration in progress. In the Symbolic Monarch Butterfly Migration project, students across the US and Canada send creatively crafted paper butterflies to Mexico for the winter along with messages for Mexican peers who live near the monarch sanctuaries. Mexican students watch over the symbolic butterflies – and return the favor in the spring as the real monarchs journey north.

International Plant Study: Tulips – Students investigate the relationship between geography, temperature, and the arrival of spring by planting Journey North Tulip Gardens each fall. They also set up bulb investigations in classrooms and schoolyards. By sharing tulip garden observations over the Internet, students across the Northern Hemisphere proclaim the official arrival of spring in their communities and follow the wave of spring as it moves northward.

Whooping Cranes – Whooping cranes had not lived in the eastern U.S. for more than a century. Now, thanks to a bold 10-year experiment, wild whooping cranes are migrating once again to these areas. Students “eavesdrop” as costume-clad humans “teach” the birds a new lifelong migration route by using an ultra-light airplane to lead the way. Youngsters read photo-rich weekly updates and kid-friendly booklets, and they view video clips of endearing young chicks from birth to their first wobbly flights.

Mystery Class – Challenge your students to find ten secret classes hiding around the globe. The central clue is the changing amount of sunlight (photoperiod) at each site. Students first use only sunrise and sunset times, and later receive geographic, climatic, and cultural clues from peers at mystery sites. In the meantime, they also track day length in their hometowns. On this inspiring ten-week journey, students use reasoning, graphing, and research skills to pinpoint locations of their global peers. The hunt begins in late January, but those who conduct some lessons this fall just might have a leg up!

This entry was posted on July 28, 2006 at 8:54 am and is filed under Curriculum, Curriculum Materials, Curriculum Programs, Free Resources, General, Science, Supplemental. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.