YCCS Blog
New Publication and Webinar Series: Teacher Call to Action for Environmental Literacy
As educators and researchers, the Center for Community and Citizen Science is focused on joining young people in the work of learning, doing, and using science to improve the world we share. This means thinking about young people as community leaders and people who do science. We have been working to support educators and educational leaders at both the district and state levels to better understand ways in which citizen science and environmental literacy more broadly can be used to deepen both student learning and development of environmental science agency.
An Update from Salmon in the Classroom
As scientists investigate the cause
of thiamine deficiency in California’s Central Valley
salmon, high school classrooms in California’s Central Valley
were given the unique opportunity to contribute data to this
ongoing research.
Engaging College Opportunity Programs, Researchers and Students through Citizen Science: Reimagining Possibilities of STEM and CTE
In January of 2020, the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCCS) began a new research practice partnership exploring STEM opportunities and developing teacher professional development with the college opportunity program GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), serving students across Glenn, Colusa, and Tehama counties.
Chris In The Creek: Community-Based Monitoring with the Watershed Education Network
Originally posted in the Watershed Education Network
This post was originally posted on September 28, 2021 on the Watershed Education Network.
Link to the original post: https://www.montanawatershed.org/blog1
Chris Jadallah is a PhD candidate in Science and Agricultural Education at the University of California, Davis where he works with the Center for Community and Citizen Science.
An Overview of the City Nature Challenge
Alexandria Tillett Miller
What is the City Nature Challenge?
The City Nature Challenge is a collaborative international bioblitz that started in 2016 as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The objective for the challenge is to motivate people in their surrounding area to get outside and document wildlife and general biodiversity. In 2017, the City Nature Challenge went national, and one year later, became a world-wide event.
Invasive Tamarisk Removal: A youth-led project
Mireya Bejarano
This post was authored by Mireya Bejarano, an undergraduate student studying Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology at the University of California, Davis. She has been working with the Center for Community and Citizen Science as a research assistant since 2020. She is interested in the positive impacts that citizen science and conservation can have on each other when combined. She plans to pursue a career in conservation post graduation. Her favorite bird native to California is the Loggerhead Shrike.
Using Citizen Science to Support Social and Emotional Learning Needs During Covid-19 to Engage Students and Caregivers
This post contains the introduction to an article that was originally published on Classroom Science. To view the full article, click here.
Using Environmental Literacy as the Through Line, All Standards All Students: A Focus on Equity and Access
This article was originally published on November 17, 2020 on Ten Strands. To view the original post, click here.
Supporting Scientific Discovery at Home
With schools currently closed,
parents face the daunting task of engaging their children in
learning at home. To meet this challenge, our center’s Innovator
Fellow, Peggy Harte, created the “Supporting
Scientific Discovery at Home a Parent’s Guide” to assist
parents in encouraging children to think deeply to explore and
discover the world.
New Video: Gardens & Citizen Science Project in Woodland Elementary Schools
The Center for Community and Citizen Science is
happy to share this new video, produced by our partner Yolo
County Office of Education, describing our collective work on
citizen science in school gardens. The video introduces our
ongoing Gardens & Citizen Science Project, and profiles the work
teachers are doing to implement citizen science school gardens,
in Woodland, California! Check out the video here.
NEW PAPER: SHIFTING K-5 SCIENCE INSTRUCTION WITH NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS CURRICULUM ADOPTION
In 2016, the State Board of Education set out to change the way students learn science by adopting the Science Framework for California Public Schools. The new framework is designed to help students deepen their knowledge in four disciplines rather than having shallow understandings on many topics. It also emphasizes what students do with their understanding of science is more important than what they know. This significant shift in the curriculum can revolutionize how students learn and practice science, but it is crucial to prepare K-5 teachers for this transition.
Listen to a radio interview about “Our Forests”
In early November 2019, KVMR’s Educationally Speaking program invited Sol Henson, the Educational Co-Director at Sierra Streams Institute, and our own Erin Bird to discuss the Youth Community Action and Science in Our Forests (“Our Forests”) project, now getting underway in Nevada County. The Our Forests project will train and support participating 3rd, 4th and 5th grade teachers as they work with their students, local environmental scientists and community organizations to study local forests and fire risk.
Engaging Educators in the City Nature Challenge
The Center collaborated with the California Naturalist Program, educators in the Woodland Joint Unified School District, and a variety of local nature centers and reserves to encourage participation in the Sacramento City Nature Challenge. Despite being its first year participating in this global competition (as one of more than 160 cities worldwide), over 500 people in the Sacramento region logged 9,798 observations of over 1,200 unique species using iNaturalist.
