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Ecologists Educators and Schools:Partners in GK-12 Education


ECOS Guide to the Ecology of the Northern Rockies

Scientist Volunteers

Ecologists Educators and Schools No Child Left Indoors
Partners in GK-12 Education

No Child Left Indoors!

ECOS is a partnership program for enhancing teaching skills of graduate students in the sciences and promoting hands-on science education in K-12 schools. We use the schoolyard and adjacent open areas in western Montana as outdoor laboratories for learning about the environment.

Ecology and environmental sciences graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Montana are showing K-12 students and their teachers how to use an ecological lens for viewing their schoolyard. Instead of a playground, they learn to see an ecological laboratory filled with organisms with interesting adaptations and interactions. The ECOS teams model what ecologists do by immersing themselves in ecological investigations in their schoolyard and classroom laboratories.


science in the backyard

From the schoolyard to the backyard

Learning science and about the world we live in does not have to be limited to lessons that happen in the formal school setting. Brooke McBride relates a story about taking science from the schoolyard to the backyard. “One little girl came up to me and told me that everything we do in ECOS, she and her family do at home. She said that her father set up a tracking plate in the backyard, and they got a skunk print! She also drew a little diagram of the birdfeeder in her journal, so she could instruct her family in making birdfeeders. She said "Now we can do environmental things in our backyard."

 

The ECOS program is sponsored by the University of Montana's Division of Biological Sciences, and the College of Forestry and Conservation.

Carol Brewer Program Director, Division of Biological Sciences Paul Alaback Program Co-Director, College of Forestry and Conservation

Funded by the National Science Foundation
ECOS is supported by the GK-12 Program of the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.