Biodiversity and Outdoor Learning

by Mary Van Dyke, September 30, 2015

Today I take time to look at a beautiful Monarch butterfly “eclose”. The butterfly steps out of its chrysalis-shell, unfurls and begins to pump up its wings.

In the classroom, insects always have six legs, and yet I can see only four of the Monarch’s.

So I google “Monarch butterfly anatomy” and find out that the Monarch is from a class of butterflies that has four prominent legs and two residual ones tucked up by the thorax. I consider the adaptation and evolutionary pathway of these butterflies, as I watch the butterfly taking shelter from the rainstorm today, waiting until the weather warms up so it can set out to fly to Mexico for the winter.

I have been wondering too why I never see any fig flowers?

And yet there are fruits budding and ripening on the fig tree alongside where I find another Monarch chrysalis attached to the underside of a fig leaf.

I google my question about fig flowers. On Wikipedia I discover I have 10,000 years of history of the cultivation of figs to catch up. I learn about the intricate relationships of the fig’s internal flower structure and the plant’s symbiosis with pollinators: the fig-specialist male and female wasps.

Outdoors, I discover more variety and more interesting patterns than the examples I am often invited to consider in classrooms indoors. In the "real-world" I have lots of questions to ask, and my predictions are not always correct. This is the power of “authentic learning” that happens when students and teachers observe, ask questions and learn together.

Next week, I am taking several groups of students outside to learn about sunflowers, leaves, and water issues. We will be observing: building awareness and appreciation, while taking time to discover and discuss patterns, ecology, communities and interrelationships between plants, people and other animals and biodiversity. We will cover standards of learning at the same time.

Going outside supports our need for biophilia: simply our love of life!

As E.O. Wilson points out in this week’s Washington Post interview, research now confirms the imperative that with increasing urbanization, we all need to go outside more (not less) to appreciate and learn about the diversity of life around us.

Resources

• Monarch butterfly anatomy http://monarchwatch.org/biology/index.htm
• The Common Fig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_fig
• E.O. Wilson explains why parks and nature are really good for your brain by Chris Mooney, September 30, 2015, Washington Post