Students collect, examine, compare, sketch, discuss, and delight in the natural world. Using the rich New England fall season, students are regularly outdoors catching, observing, and studying similarities, habits, adaptations, and patterns. Pond animals, trees, leaves, and the forest floor are examined in great detail while students learn about maintaining live specimens, making a leaf collection, using dichotomous keys, and the systematic sampling of diversity in an area. As students move indoors for the winter, the program may focus on plant growth and development. Of particular fascination to the students are the systems of their own bodies.
Students link winter and spring seasons with a study of birds.
Students become familiar with most of the marine organisms likely to be found on a typical New England beach. Looking outside themselves with appreciation for diversity and respect for adaptations and relationships, students truly see the natural world for the first time. Looking within themselves, students encounter organization and complexity of form. Life begins to take on new meaning. Click on the Eagle to move to the next course of study description for grade seven.