Nearly a decade ago, Christine Beekman of the
National Park Service stepped outside of the visitor center
classroom and into the desert of southeast Utah, leading a
boisterous third-grade class into a maze of sandstone formations.
She organized a game designed to teach the students about
predator-prey relations in ecosystems, dividing the kids into
groups of bobcats and mice, designating safe areas for the prey,
and setting them loose upon each other.
“Amidst
all this chaos,” she recalls, “one of the third-graders shouted,
‘Oh, this is so much fun! And we’re learning, too!’ ” Now, this
field trip and 17 others appear in a new, free teacher’s guide,
Red Rock Adventures, designed by Canyon Country
Outdoor Education, and funded by the National Park Service, the
National Park Foundation and Exxon
International.
The trips in the guide are for
grades 1-6, and include pre- and post-trip activities, such as
imaginary river trips for first-graders and classroom geology
studies for fifth-graders that reinforce trip topics. The 289-page
guide also meets the National Science Education Content
Standards.
The guide uses habitats in southeast
Utah for the field trips and activities. Beekman hopes it will
inspire teachers everywhere to blend science and outdoor
education.
For more information, contact the Park
Service at 435/719-2206, or download the complete guide at
www.nps.gov/seug/ccoe.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Curriculum for a desert classroom.
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