Post #2: citizen science

Two posts in one day!
I'm always reminding everyone to be looking for science news to share in classrooms and there were two that I came across that intrigued me.

The first one is in the vein of the butterfly count and the garden bird survey earlier in the year -the Great Kiwi Bee Count! If you've heard me talking about them, bees are one of my favourite insects! They're one of those insects that you can tell reasonably quickly are important to us (and perhaps even to our survival if you read some websites out there). The article link is here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/83627978/The-Great-Kiwi-Bee-Count-We-need-to-look-after-bees? whilst families can enter the data here (the link is in the article): www.stuff.co.nz/GreatKiwiBeeCount.  
The idea of children taking part in these surveys is a great way to connect them to the work of scientists. When I had a quick look at the data entry site, I was surprised at how many bees there actually are in Aotearoa. Perhaps this is an activity children could do with their parents -which is another thing that I'm into: getting the whole family science wired.
This is a great way to get the children understanding a little about how we do science. Take the students outside to a certain part of the garden and they can all count for 10-15 minutes. Once we're done, everyone can come in and we can collate the data to see if we can find patterns... Do the bees like certain plants or certain colours of plants? Do wasps and bees hang out together? What about bumblebees? In fact, who cares that there are not enough bees? Why do we care? As the children talk, they might start thinking about whether this is enough data to make a statement about bees? In science, we need lots of data! If the children are older, perhaps they could talk about whether our results are reliable? Perhaps it had been a windy day so all the bees had been blown to a certain place? Can we say that bees only like red flowers if there were only red flowers in the garden? Perhaps you could share your own counting that is wildly different which would lead to the need to be honest about what we're surveying. Although I really like bumblebees (even more than honeybees!), I can't pretend there are any at my house -why? Older children might even like to talk about outliers -where ordinarily honey bees are found in this particular location... and although three were seen at a different location to all the others, it might be that they were actually a different bee or perhaps miscounted or there really could be bees there!
I think there are a lot of possibilities for capabilities development -children gathering data, making statements based on the data, critiquing results and then sharing their results, perhaps with a bar graph.
In terms of vocabulary, children will learn about bee names at the least. Perhaps, their curiosity being piqued, they may investigate a bit more about bees -their lives, the hive, parts of a bee, etc...

The other article I read was one about a man reported to have pretty much saved a butterfly species on his own. He didn't receive any support but simply decided to repopulate the California pipevine swallowtail butterfly. The article link is: http://www.odditycentral.com/news/man-single-handedly-repopulates-rare-butterfly-species-in-his-own-backyard.html. It's an interesting article to read and I've included one that might be better for the juniors too: http://www.boredpanda.com/rare-blue-swallowtail-pipevine-butterfly-repopulation-tim-wong/ which would be too hard for the children to read but would be very interesting to discuss and look at all the photos. I wonder if children could compare it to that one constant in the junior science programme -the Monarch butterfly! What's the same? What's different? Could they make up a Venn diagram to show these similarities and differences?
Again, this is following that citizen science idea -imagine your class helping to repopulate a species! There's also the other side to discuss -should we let species become extinct or should we do our best to help them. Creatures like the Monarch butterfly, stick insects and even the regular frog seem to be on the decline -what can we do to help them? Should we? What's their role in the environment? What would happen if there were no caterpillars to eat the swan plants?

Anyway some ideas for the classroom that link our science and literacy together quite nicely!