Background: American Indian communities in the United States experience considerable health inequities, including increased exposure to environmental contaminants. Consequently, community members of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation identified the lack of water-related environmental knowledge among children as an area of concern. Aim: The purpose of…

A Clemson University introductory landscape design class collaborated with South Carolina Botanical Gardens (SCBG) staff and coordinators of Sprouting Wings to design an exploratory Children's Garden within the SCBG. Service learning provides students with invaluable real-world experiences solving problems and interacting with clients while…

In this paper we describe our research using a multi-user virtual environment, "Quest Atlantis," to embed fourth grade students in an aquatic habitat simulation. Specifically targeted towards engaging students in a rich inquiry investigation, we layered a socio-scientific narrative and an interactive rule set into a multi-user virtual environment…

Purpose/Objectives: The purposes of this study were to: 1) analyze beverage selections of elementary students consuming National School Lunch Program meals (NSLP) and lunches brought from home (LBFH), 2) compare overall meal quality (MQ) of NSLP and LBFH by food components using Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI-2010), and 3) investigate the impact…

The world's population is growing by about 80 million people a year, implying an estimated increased freshwater demand of about 64 billion cubic meters annually (World Water Assessment Programme, 2009, Water in a Changing World: United Nations World Water Development Report 3, Chap. 1, p. 3-21). Groundwater depletion, which reduces the amount of…

This activity has been designed to help students understand a variety of concepts related to water use, efficiency, and students' own impacts on their watershed. It is intended for use both in the classroom and at home. The first concept covered in this exercise is, "What is a watershed?" Ideally this concept will be conveyed in the context of the…

In this article, the authors outline an interdisciplinary unit of study using quality children's literatures, and they describe several instructional strategies and activities for reading and responding to historical fiction and informational texts. This "piratical study" integrates social studies and the language arts. Several social…

With crosscutting concepts such as stability and change in the "Next Generation Science Standards," this article was written for those who have wondered how to teach these concepts in a way that is relevant to students. In this investigation, students ask the question, "Why is the pond dirty?" As students investigate the health…

The Oregon 4-H Wildlife Stewards program has been training teachers and volunteers to convert school grounds to education sites by constructing schoolyard wildlife habitats since 1997. The publication "What Can We Learn at the Pond? 4-H Wildlife Stewards Master Leader Guide" (Bourdeau 2004a) was written to support the program's focus on developing…