School Forest Lesson Plan (Fourth Grade)

Objectives:

1. Determine a tree's age from its rings.
2. Identify the student's birth year and other significant dates in his/her life on the tree's rings.
3. Identify other significant historical dates by placing them in appropriate locations on the tree's rings.
4. Question, analyze, and investigate those things that occurred within the tree's life.
5. Demonstrate decision-making skills using data, suggest alternatives, and predict alternatives.
6. Understand that every organism goes through a life cycle of growth, maturity, decline, and death while its role in the ecosystem changes.

Materials:

1. Cross sections or increment bore cores from a variety of trees (obtained from the local DNR station)
2. Copies of the student worksheet
3. Significant dates in the student's, Wisconsin's, and the nations history
4. Ruler and pencil
5. Increment bore (if permission is gained to bore into a tree at the school forest site)
6. Tree cookies (obtained from the local DNR station)
7. Eyewitness Video - Trees
8. Digital Camera

Before:

• K-W-L chart on tree rings. Students will fill in the "K" (what I already know about tree rings) and the "W" (what I want to learn about tree rings)
• Discuss tree rings while observing the tree cookies. Students should know what a tree's age can be determined by its annual rings. Each ring has two parts: a wide, light part and a narrow, dark part.
• Through identification of a real tree's rings, students should be able to identify changes that occurred during the tree's life and to determine the type of year, wet or dry, each ring represents.
• Watch Eyewitness Video - Tree, and discuss

Forest

• Review the kind of information that can be learned from a cross section of a tree.
• Hand out copies of the two-page activity Reading Rings, adapted from Ranger Rick's Nature Scope, Volume 2, Number 1, National Wildlife Federation.
• Students locate the four examples in Part 1 and place them on the tree ring page, Part 2
• Students count back on the rings to locate the year in which they were born and place it on the tree ring page.
• Continue placing other significant dates from the students' lives, and from the history of Wisconsin and the nation that the teacher has assigned.
• Use the digital camera to record activities.

After

• Fill in the "L" of our K-W-L charts (what did I learn about tree rings?)
• Discuss the results of our activities from the school forest.
• Students would be able to recognize the evidence of fire, drought, insect attack, and dead branches on their line drawings.
• Students should be able to correctly place their birth year and other significant years in their lives on the line drawing.
• Students would be able to correctly place other significant dates on the line drawing as assigned by the teacher.
• Students should be able to identify years of greater or lesser precipitation, and hypothesize years in which things such as farming, forestry, insect attack, or growth would have been good or bad.

D.O.L.:

• Dimension 1- Attitudes and Perceptions
  To make sure that students experience a sense of comfort and order all rules of behavior and assignments will be explained prior to the actual site visit. Ten minutes of free time will be given to allow students to explore their environment. Students will interact with their peers.
• Dimension 2- Acquiring & Integrating Knowledge
  Use the K-W-L chart to activate prior knowledge. Students will have terms and graphic representations of the skill or process they are learning. Students will keep all of the information they've gathered in an organized way. Students will internalize the activity by doing the activity that involves them finding their own birth date on the tree rings.
• Dimension 3- Extend and Refine Knowledge
  Students will be comparing and contrasting the rings of various trees to one another.. Students will be classifying ring-types by color, size, and whether or not there are other identifying marks on the rings.
• Dimension 4- Use Knowledge Meaningfully
  If students are having difficulties or there has been a problem with counting and classifying the rings, will resolve the problem and correct the mistake with the help of the entire group. After observing the tree rings, students will hypothesize the things that may have happened during the tree's life such as drought, fire, and insect attack.
• Dimension 5- Habits of the Mind
  During the tree ring activity, energize the group through verbal encouragement. Instead of giving students the answers for the activity, ask them questions and show them examples. Reward each student that participates at the end of the activity, whether they achieved the correct answers or not. Challenge students to go beyond the given assignment and find other dates on the tree's rings.

Technology:

• Use the digital camera to take pictures of the activities as students are working.
• Download the pictures from the digital camera to the computer and then put them in a Power Point Program to show to other classes and parents.
• Print the pictures from the digital camera to display.

References:

• Eyewitness Video - Trees. In school forest box.
• Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Pembine Station