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Teaching science in elementary school is crucial for nurturing young minds, but as educators, finding the time and resources to create engaging lessons can be a challenge. That's where this podcast comes in. Welcome to Naturally Teaching Elementary Science. The show dedicated to supporting elementary teachers in their quest to bring authentic and place based science experiences to their classroom. I'm Victoria Zablocki, a certified elementary teacher turned outdoor educator with over a decade of experience coaching teachers on effective science teaching methods. I'm passionate about making science accessible, understandable and fun for educators and students alike. Join me as we explore strategies for teaching science in elementary school with practical teaching tips, insightful interviews, picture book reviews and more. Whether you've taught for a long time or just started your teaching journey, this podcast is your trusty resource for enhancing your science curriculum. So let's grow together.

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All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Naturally Teaching Elementary Science podcast. My name is Victoria Zablocki and I'm your host. So have you ever heard of citizen science projects? But you're not really sure what that actually means. If you're unfamiliar with citizen science projects they're projects that involve non-scientist participation in data collection and reporting for scientific research, and many of these projects love to have student participation. So in this episode, I'm going to describe six different citizen science projects that are connected to a Next Generation Science Standard for grades K-5. However, make sure you listen to each of the different projects, because you may find that the project described for first grade could also work for your fourth graders, or the kindergarten project could work for your third graders. Even though I've tied these to specific Next Generation Science Standards, they could fit into your curriculum as well. So just make sure you listen all the way through to the end.

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But before we get into it, why should teachers even consider using citizen science projects? What's the big deal? Your students get to act like scientists at a young age by collecting data in a scientific way and then reporting it to the scientific community, where it will be used to make important discoveries and decisions, which is huge. They're making an impact as a child in the scientific community. That's incredible! Citizen science projects are also powerful opportunities for your students to develop their scientific skills and to get involved in their community. They'll also help your students feel empowered to use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment, because they're actually doing something that actually contributes to conservation decisions. And as a young person, that's very exciting and very empowering. This is also one of those opportunities they will remember for the rest of their lives. So when we think about our own childhood, I'm sure there's a few projects that stick out in your mind, and this is going to be one of those for your students. These projects are very unique and awe inspiring and can create lifelong memories. Also, your students can learn the value of hard work through the various preparations for the project and for the diligence it takes to implement all of the steps. Once you commit to being a citizen science in a certain project, you have to make sure you follow the rules and the steps very meticulously in order to make sure the data is accurate; so that helps develop that hard work and preparation. All right. So now that we understand why citizen science projects are so impactful on your students, let's get into some projects that you could use in your classroom.

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So starting with kindergarten, a Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was K-ESS3-2: Ask questions to obtain information about the purpose of weather forecasting, to prepare for and respond to severe weather. And the citizen science project that I found for this standard is called mPing, Meteorological Phenomena Identification Near the Ground. It's a lot less intimidating than it sounds. So this project is actually a collaboration between NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Oklahoma's Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, whoa say that three times fast! Either way, it's two very influential organizations in the field of meteorology. So the goal of the mPing app is for citizen scientists to submit observations of precipitation hitting the ground in their area. So one of the best parts about citizen science is that there are more people in more areas gathering data. It's a form of crowdsourcing. So scientists can only be in so many different areas, so instead of being on the ground in all of these different locations, gathering data, they're relying on us, the amateurs, to help them identify the precipitation we're seeing, and they're comparing it to their models that are created from radar. So what will happen is our anonymous data, which is submitted by us the citizen scientists, will be used to help meteorologists develop and refine their algorithms, which will help in the long run for better forecasting. So this project in particular, is mostly interested in precipitation data from winter but they also want information about precipitation during thunderstorms, so hail, extreme rain, that sort of thing. So how does this connect to the standard that I mentioned previously? mPing is designed to collect data from winter weather and thunderstorms, because they aim to better understand severe weather. So if you and your students participate in this project, then they can understand and see the patterns of the weather that they're gathering, and they'll start to automatically be inquisitive about why scientists want to know this information. Why do they want to know about winter weather? Why do they want to hear about these thunderstorms that are happening? That will help with your conversation about severe weather, and why bother forecasting it ahead of time. An awesome benefit to this project is that it uses a free app called mPing to submit data to the project, and it's available on Apple Store and on Google Play, and it can be run on any web enabled device with GPS location capabilities. Aka your smartphone, or potentially your iPad, if you have an iPad in the classroom. So you could use it on the go when you guys are outside, if you use outdoor education, or while you're in the classroom, you could pull it up on your phone and have somebody input the precipitation that you're seeing hitting the ground outside your classroom. Super easy, but very powerful in the eyes of our kindergarteners, they can do this. They can tell when it's snowing. They can tell when it's hailing. They can tell when it's raining. For each of these projects, I made sure to grab a link of where you could find more information, and I'll put those in the show notes, instead of saying it right now and having you try to remember to write it down, these will be in the show notes. If you go to naturallyteaching.com/episode15, you can grab all of the links from there.

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All right, moving on to first grade. The Next Generation Science Standard that I chose to focus on was 1-PS4-1: Plan and conduct investigations to provide evidence that vibrating materials can make sound and that sound can make materials vibrate. So for first grade, the citizen science project I chose was eBird. So this is a project from the Cornell Lab, and the goal of this app is for citizen scientists to submit observations of bird calls to help scientists get a better understanding for bird populations over the course of the year. You can also submit observations by birds that you've seen, but I'm going to focus on bird calls, because that's how this project relates to the standard. So if you use the Merlin Bird ID app, you can actually see the sound waves of the sounds being picked up around the device, and your students can see the wave distributions of the bird calls. Once you've begun your conversation about sound waves, you can actually start on this project and use the Merlin Bird ID app to be able to see the sound waves of bird calls near you. It's pretty cool to look at. So not only will they be able to see the sound waves that these birds are producing, but they also get to contribute to eBird which is one of the biggest databases in the world for scientific information collected by citizen scientists. So you can use the eBird app if you know what sounds you've been hearing, or you could use the free app called Merlin Bird ID, which I described in Episode 10 as one of my favorite nature apps for outdoor education. And this app will actually record bird calls, and then you can go through and try to identify what bird was what based on their suggestions, and then also referencing their pre-recorded calls. And then you can cross examine them and make sure they're actually the same bird. Once you're done with that, you can actually submit those birds to eBird, and that will contribute to the ongoing database. So again, this project uses a free app. You can either use eBird or you can use Merlin Bird ID. Merlin Bird ID is where you can identify the sound waves, and they're both available on the Apple Store and on Google Play, and can be run on web enabled devices with GPS location capabilities, aka smartphones or some iPads.

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Moving on to second grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I focused on was 2-LS2-2: Develop a simple model that mimics the function of an animal in dispersing seeds or pollinating plants. And the project that I pulled for this one is The Great Sunflower Project. And this project is from a set of people led by a San Francisco State University researcher, with the help from a Cornell representative, and the goal of this project is for citizen scientists to submit observations of pollinators visiting a single plant over the course of five minutes or more. So how does this connect to the standard we talked about, The Great Sunflower Project allows students to observe pollinators visiting flowers, which is pollination in real time, so they would be getting to see pollination happening right in front of their face, but then they're also doing data collection at the same time. So this project is actually working for multiple standards for your science curriculum, and it's also contributing to an overall project that helps scientists understand what's happening with our pollinators. This one's a little bit more challenging on the data submission because it requires so much more of the teacher's time. So the data for this project is submitted through an online account on the project's website, and as the teacher, you would take your students observations and submit them, one at a time by logging into your account, then clicking Add a Count. It'll ask you which kind of count you did, and you'll answer "stationary". Then choose an observation time, which will be the same for all of your observations, because all of your students will start at the same time. Identify where you were, which will be the same for everyone, because they're all in the same location. Enter the number of flowers that you are watching, enter the type of plant, which is something that you select from a Smart Box with choices. Then you enter what your students saw, and then enter the number of minutes you observed, which will be the same for all of your students, because you'll do this all together. Some teaching tips to help this go smoother is to provide your students a one page reference sheet of pollinator groups using simple pictures, and that'll let your students identify the general family of pollinators that are visiting the plants that they're watching. And on the backside of that one page reference sheet, use the Smart Box options of plant types from the website to give your students examples of the different options so that they can record what type of plant they were observing. On that note, you'll want to give each of your students a printed recording sheet that includes all the required information in the order that you submit their observations so that you can quickly add all of their data to the website, and to cut down on the number of observations you'll have to submit and to boost the accuracy of your data, consider having your students observe in partners or groups of three. Three sets of eyes are better than one, and your project will be more accurate if you have them agree upon the number of pollinators visiting. One last thing about this project that's cool is that the website includes a lot of great information to help you with this project. Some of the resources they have are a quick start guide, pollinator habitat, challenge, information on how to count pollinator information, a pollinator gallery, and they also have teaching resources. So this project specifically wants teachers and their students involved.

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Moving on to third grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I focused on was 3-LS1-1: Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles, but all have in common, birth, growth, reproduction and death. So the citizen science project that I chose for this standard is Journey North - Monarch Butterflies. This project is from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and the goal is for citizen scientists to submit observations of Monarch butterflies and Milkweed phenology across North America. So how does that connect to the standard? The data needed for this project is based on the life cycles of Monarch butterflies and Milkweed plants. So you're getting to observe nature, looking for monarch life stages and also milkweed stages. So you're getting to do plants and animals at the same time. For a citizen science project, we're killing two birds with one stone. So this one is also data submitted through an online account on the project's website. And as the teacher, you would take your students observations and submit them one at a time. So again, some teaching tips would be to give your students a printed recording sheet that includes all the required information in the order that you'll submit their observations, so that you can quickly add all of their data to the website, and also to cut down on the number of observations you'll have to submit, and to boost the accuracy of your data, you should consider having students observe in partners or groups of three, just like the previous project. The project's website also includes a lot of great information, including a page about the project, an annual cycle wheel, which is on the resources page, journal pages for educators, and it actually has a section for kids with pictures and other helpful information.

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Moving on to fourth grade, the standard that I chose to focus on was 4-ESS4-2: Develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen. So the citizen science project that I chose for this standard is called S'COOL: Students Cloud Observations On-Line. So it's spelled S, apostrophe, C, O, O, O, L. This project is from NASA and the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment program, aka GLOBE. The goal of this project is for citizen scientists to submit observations of clouds in their area to validate NASA's clouds and the Earth's radiant energy systems instruments, aka CERES. The connection for this standard is that clouds can be seen as white because the sunlight passes through the water droplets, and the white light of the sun scatters equally through those water droplets, and then we see them as gray, because clouds with more water droplets block the sunlight, which keeps the white light from reaching our eyes, and the clouds appear darker. So all that being said, we see clouds because of the way that the water droplets interact with the sunlight. So this project uses a free app called GLOBE Observer to submit cloud data to the project, and it's also available on Apple Store and Google Play, and can be run on any web enabled device with GPS location capabilities with a working camera, because they do rely on pictures for some of these observations. And a cool thing for this project is they actually have a certified e-training for educators on their site, so you can go on watch the training and know exactly what you need to do.

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Last but not least, is fifth grade. And the standard that I chose for fifth grade is 5-ESS3-1: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment. This is the all encompassing standard; pretty much every citizen science project could fall under this standard and work because citizen science projects are primarily about some sort of conservation or research to be able to help understand how to protect the Earth's resources and environment. So the citizen science project that I pulled for this standard is the Great Backyard Bird Count. And this project is from the Cornell Lab, Audubon and Birds Canada, working collaboratively. And the goal of this project is for citizen scientists to join millions of other citizen scientists and submit observations of bird sightings during a set of four days in February. And this helps scientists understand bird populations around the world all at the same time. So the connection to the standard is the Great Backyard Bird Count gives your students the opportunity to provide data to studies on bird populations, which informs conservation decisions. So for this project, you can submit your sightings using either the free Merlin Bird ID app or the eBird app. Or you can also submit your observations online with their free account. This is a collaborative observation so you and your students work together to keep track of the birds that you see, either at your bird feeders or while you're walking around the schoolyard. And then you submit one list each day you observe, so you don't have to go through and submit all of your students' individual observations separately. You all work together to create one list, which will save you time as the submitter. So some teaching tips for this project is that the Great Backyard Bird Count has a very robust website with lots of resources for teachers and explanations on how to participate. But, it can also be slightly overwhelming because there's so much information. So if you want to skip sorting through their information, check out my article, The Great Backyard Bird Count: How to Take Part for Elementary Teachers on my website naturallyteaching.com and I'll make sure to put the link in the show notes, so it's easy for you to find. The article walks you through how to participate, how to find Bird Count lists for your area, the rules for the bird count, picture books to introduce counting birds to your students, how to create a bird feeding station if you want to go that route, suggestions for field guides for identification, activities for your students, and more. I also have a mini unit on my Teachers Pay Teachers store called The Great Backyard Bird Count: Citizen Science Projects for 5th Graders. And there are science and ELA activities already ready to go. Some of the activities in that mini unit include bird food research, so researching and recording information about five common bird foods. Bird feeder research, researching and recording information about four different bird feeder styles. Bird food and feeder proposals, so analyzing those research pieces and writing a persuasive proposal for which bird food and feeders should be used for the project. My bird ID information, which is researching and diagramming important identification information for local birds. Data collection forms for the actual bird count. Analyzing class results. And how does this help? An opinion writing piece where your students will evaluate whether they think the project helped the scientific community or not.

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So in a nutshell, we talked about the benefits of citizen science projects on your students. I also described six different citizen science projects for grades K-5 that were connected to Next Generation Science Standards, including mPing, which is observing precipitation; eBird, which is submitting bird calls; The Great Sunflower Project, which is watching pollinators at flowers; Journey North: Monarch Butterflies, which is recording life cycles of Monarchs and Milkweed plants; S'COOL, which is observing clouds; and the Great Backyard Bird Count, which is counting bird sightings in February. And let me tell you, this is just a fraction of the available citizen science projects out there. So check citizenscience.gov/catalog/# for the Federal crowdsourcing and citizen science catalog to search for projects near you. On this site, you can filter by status, such as if they're active or if they're complete. You can also search by agency or by field of science, and as of this recording, there are 503 citizen science projects listed, and there are plenty more that aren't listed on this site. So there are lots of options for you and your students. So go out and find the right one! And don't forget that if you'd like some help navigating the Great Backyard Bird Count, you can check out my article, The Great Backyard Bird Count: How to Take Part for Elementary Teachers on my website, naturallyteaching.com or you can grab my made for you mini unit, The Great Backyard Bird Count: Citizen Science Projects for 5th Graders from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I'll have both of those linked in the show notes. So thanks for taking time to listen today. I know you're busy, and I truly appreciate the time you take to tune in. If you have any questions, wonderings or citizen science projects you've joined, get a hold of me on Instagram at naturally.teaching, or you can email me at Victoria@naturallyteaching.com and don't forget to check out the show notes for this episode at naturallyteaching.com/episode15 for all of the links. Thanks again for joining me today and until next time, keep exploring, keep learning and keep naturally teaching.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Naturally Teaching Elementary Science podcast. I hope you found it informative, inspiring and full of actionable insights to enhance your science teaching journey. Connect with me on social media for more updates, science tidbits and additional resources. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at naturally.teaching. Let's continue the conversation and share our passion for elementary science education together. Don't forget to visit my website naturallyteaching.com for all the show notes from today's episode. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps me improve and reach more educators just like you. Thank you again for listening and until next time, keep exploring, keep learning and keep naturally teaching.