Integrating the Young Naturalist Awards into Your Science Curriculum
We’ve spoken with teachers throughout the country to learn how they integrate the Young Naturalist Awards competition into their science curriculum. Some teachers make it a semester or year-long project and require each student in their class to participate. Others suggest the contest to students in their science clubs or present it as an extra credit project. Engaging your students in independent research might seem daunting. Dividing the project into smaller tasks that students can complete over the course of the school year or even just one single semester makes it much more doable. See Sample Schedule
Below is a step-by-step guide for conducting the YNA competition with your students.
Step 1: Introduce the Young Naturalist Awards contest to students
The Video found on our home page introduces students to the program, illustrates how one student conducted his investigation, and gives students tips for finding questions to investigate. Play the video for students. Conduct the activity, Sharpen Your Observation Skills, with them. The activity will start students thinking about how they view the natural world in a different way..
To further extend students' experience, take a class outing to a natural setting (park, school yard, etc.). Have students spend 15-20 minutes simply observing. Encourage them to take notes, make drawings, and document what they see, hear, smell, and feel. Have them write down any questions that come up. Back in the classroom discuss with students what they observed as well as any questions that came up.
Display the 2012 YNA poster in your classroom (downloadable from our website or contact the YNA administrator at yna@amnh.org for the full size version).
If you choose, send a letter home to families. See Family Letter.
Step 2: Review the Process of Scientific Inquiry
Remind students that when they conduct an investigation in the natural world they will use the scientific process. Review the process of scientific inquiry found on the 2012 YNA Poster. Then, choose one or two sample essays of past winners (at the students' grade level) for students to read. Discuss how the authors used the process of scientific inquiry to conduct their investigations.
Step 3: Identify good questions to investigate
Have students do the activity What's Happening in the Natural World Around You? to identify possible questions to investigate. When students are done, discuss which questions might be suitable for the Young Naturalist Awards competition. Call on students who have decided on investigations to share them with the class.
Distribute What Makes a Good Research Question? Using the four criteria on the handout discuss students' questions. Help students fine-tune questions or narrow down questions that are too broad. Provide help to students who still need to identify a question. Distribute Researching a Question to students. Have students begin filling it out.
Step 4: Do Background Research
Have students do some preliminary research on their topic at home, in school or at the local library. Remind them that they should consult a variety of sources including websites, scientific books, and journals. They may also find an expert on the subject to interview. The research provides the necessary background information that students will need. It will help them refine the question they want answered and will help focus their investigations. Remind students to keep records of the books, journals, and websites they consult. They will need them for their bibliography.
Step 5: Make Predictions
With students read, “What is a prediction?” in the guidelines section. Explain that their research and observations will lead them to formulate a hypothesis, an explanation or answer to their question. Based on their hypothesis they should make a prediction about what the outcome of their investigation will be. Tell students when they make a prediction they should think about what experiments, observations, or measurements they would need to support that prediction. Point out that hypotheses or predictions do not necessarily have to be made at this point. Students may need to gather more data and/or do more background research before they are able to make a hypothesis or prediction. Those students who want to formulate a hypothesis or make a prediction. at this point should record it on the Researching a Question sheet.
Step 6: Methodology and Data Collection Procedures
Call on a volunteer to share his or her question, hypothesis, and prediction. Write them on the board. Make sure the prediction is expressed as a testable statement. If not, help students reword it. Explain that the next step will be to begin collecting data that will help answer the student’s question. Ask students what data they would need to collect to answer the question. Have them identify the equipment needed to collect the data, and where, when, and over what time period the data will need to be collected. Write responses on the board and discuss them. Then have students repeat the same procedure for their own questions. Remind students of the various strategies that exist to obtain the data they need: field study, experimentation, secondary research (researching in journals and online sources to obtain data that has been collected by others), and scientific modeling. Discuss how they might combine different strategies. Have students describe the evidence they need as well as the strategies they will use to obtain the data on the Researching a Question sheet.
Step 7: Analyze Data/Make Inferences
After students have collected their data, they are ready to analyze it and make inferences. Call on volunteers to describe their questions, hypotheses, predictions, procedures and data they’ve collected. Discuss what their evidence shows and whether it answers their questions or confirms their predictions. Remind students that reviewing their methods is critical to ensuring that their data are sound. Encourage students to share any new questions that arose during their investigation. Distribute Essay Checklist and have students prepare a first draft of their essay. The draft should have all charts, tables, or graphs and all photos or artwork in place, as well as the bibliography (written according to the style on the YNA Web site).
Step 8: Feedback
Getting feedback will help students clarify their ideas and will improve their investigations. You can review students’ essays and provide suggestions for how the essay could be improved. You may also wish to have students exchange and review each others essays. Reviewers should read the essay and fill out the Feedback Form. Remind reviews that their comments should be constructive. Then have partners review the feedback forms together and discuss ways the essays can be improve.
Step 9: Prepare a Final Report
With students, review Prepare a Final Report in the contest guidelines. Discuss with the class ways they might structure their essays. Remind students that their work needs to have a strong personal voice—a description of their investigations told by them in their own words. Review How to Avoid Plagiarism on the YNA Web site. (Students may need to be reminded that plagiarism is a very serious offense.) Review the final draft. (If the essays are graded, the grades should not be sent along with the entry form.) Students should neatly fill out the entry form and sign it. The teacher completes Part II and sends the essays to the Young Naturalist Awards.
Additional Tips
- Collaborate with other teachers or with environmental groups
You can maximize the impact of the project by inviting teachers in other disciplines to work with you and your students. Consider collaborating with English, math, computer technology or art teachers. Members of local environmental groups are often more than happy to offer their services. They can do class presentations, conduct field trips and/or provide expert knowledge in specific areas.
- Have students keep a nature journal
Journaling is a good way for students to begin to connect to the natural world, to learn its patterns and to keep accurate data important to their research project. Discuss the purpose of a nature journal with students. Show them sample journal pages and have them identify the different kinds of information found in them and how that information might be useful. Conduct several journaling expeditions to a local park or the school’s backyard. This should be an opportunity for students to observe, write down their observations, and perhaps sketch what they see.
Note: A good journaling resource is Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You by Clare Walker Leslie, Charles E. Roth
- Sketching or Photography
Using photos and sketches will help bring students’ research to life. Point out to students that sketches and photographs serve multiple purposes. They may serve as observational data, may reveal interpretation of evidence collected, and may provide the reader with a visual that will help him or her understand the topic and point of view more fully. Through sketching a subject, students become more aware of details that they would otherwise miss if they were simply observing. You might consider partnering with your school’s art teacher for a lesson on sketching natural objects. Or you might conduct an activity in class. Bring in small items: rocks, leaves, twigs, seed pods, etc. (one per student) Call on students to sketch the object in detail. Then, invite several volunteers to display their illustrations. Discuss with the class whether sketching the object made them more aware of its details and whether they learned anything new about their objects. Refer students to the artwork pictured in the essays of the Young Naturalist winners.
If possible, have a photographer visit your class to give tips on how to take meaningful photographs. If that is not possible, go over some points with the students yourself. The quality of the photographs is more important than the quantity.
- The photographs should be in focus.
The subject should be large enough to see it clearly. (A tiny speck in the sky circled on a photo does not give the reader an inkling of what the bird looks like.) If your subject is far away, try to take a picture through a telephoto lens. The photos should relate to specific passages in your essay. (If you are writing about a beaver dam, then a clear, focused photo of a beaver dam could be used.)
- Judging
Judges will use a rubric to evaluate 13 categories. Each category will be scored from 1(poor) to 4 (excellent) and the scores totaled. Students can use the rubric to guide them in their research and in the preparation of their essays. Teachers may want to use the rubric to grade students’ work.
- Family Involvement
This may be the first time students in 7th or 8th grade will conduct research in the natural world. Many teachers like to engage students’ families in this activity in order to help students along. This can be accomplished by sending a letter home outlining the project and inviting parents to be of assistance. See Family Letter.
