Institute

Into the Woods, a professional development program held by GLOBE NY Metro, works to enhance teacher content knowledge about the environment while training teachers to extend their classrooms outdoors into nature. Teachers receive the tools, equipment, and long-term guidance needed to design and supervise grade-appropriate research projects that align with and enhance required teaching curriculum. Veteran teachers from Into the Woods will provide insight, guidance, and opportunities for collaboration. The NYU Wallerstein Collaborative for Urban Environmental Education will assist you and your classes with service-learning. Two required one-day follow-up workshops will be held on a weekend day in November and in February. Into the Woods will meet at Queens College on July 5th – July 8th, and July 11th,  and run from 8:30 to 3:30 with breakfast and lunch provided. A stipend is provided.

Register Here for the Summer Institute by July 4th

Summer Institute Agenda

Day 1: Introductions, Environmental Literacy, and Nature Study; Trip to Cunningham Park

• Breakfast, Meet, Greet, & Icebreaker
• Environmental Literacy and how environmental literacy fits with curricular Scope and Sequence in ELA, Math, Social Studies, and Science.
• At Cunningham Park: Practice & Modeling of Observation skills, Descriptive Skills, and Class Management

Day 2: Earth Systems & Exploring the Natural Environment; Trip to Orchard Beach

• How Earth Functions as a System: Components and Interactions
• Physical geography & aerial photography; what will we see in the field?
• Visiting Orchard Beach: Rocks, Soils, Shorelines, Marsh, Lagoon, Forest, & Earth Systems
• Group Explorations of Orchard Beach

Day 3: Earth as a System: Soils, Weather, and Trees; Queens College Campus

• Soils: Field soil characterization, collection, and analysis on campus
• Weather: Cloud types, cloud cover, air temperature, surface temperature
• Trees: Using street trees and forest trees as a resource for classroom study

Day 4: Water quality, Watersheds, and Ponds; Trip to Alley Pond Park

• Where does your water come from?
• At Alley Pond: Pond Life & Water Quality
• Back at Queens College: Identification and analysis of pond macro-invertebrate assemblages

Day 5: Queens College: Service Learning and Citizen Science

• Service-learning presented by the NYU Wallerstein Collaborative for Urban Environmental Education
• Best Practices & Activities Across the Curriculum
• Introduction and initial prep. for student research and the 2017 Into the Woods Symposium

November, Follow-up Workshop: The World of Birds and Citizen Science

February, Follow-up Workshop: Monarch Butterflies in the Classroom