The Woodlands Project
 Working in the Real World - Fall Creek Hike
May 10 - May 15 

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As we worked and studied in the classroom, our minds were on the end of the week, our anticipation growing each day as the outdoors part of the study approached. Students had hiked earlier in the year, so they were no longer novices. They had experience using a trail map, and recording information and observations on a field data sheet while taking in the sights, sounds, and other sensations of the woods.  As a teacher, I hoped to build on these earlier experiences and place the students in a situation a notch higher in their scientific abilities, to discern, to locate, and identify several of the major trees found in northeast Missouri forests.  

Again, the idea was to blend the "doing" and "knowing" which is quite different than most school lessons where these parts of learning are normally separated. I reference the researchers Brown, Collins, and Duguid from their paper Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning in which they argue that "knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used."

Estimating the height of a Tree with a Ruler!

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