Introduction


 * Teachers, thank you for helping us connect kids to each other through birds! **

Our goal is to connect children with nature and build their scientific and environmental literacy through school-based ﻿and field experiences focusing on birds and their habitat needs. Birds provide an accessible hook for getting children outside, observing and connecting to the environment and understanding first-hand the importance of where they live.Though birds are part of our everyday lives, they still capture our imaginations—with their ability to fly, their colorful plumage, and their amazing capacity for song. Wherever you are, and what ever the season, you can find bird species in your area.

And while you can observe some bird species at any time of year, some species are truly international citizens, traveling between countries and continents on their yearly migrations. Through these spectacular and mysterious migrations, birds can connect us—quite literally—to other places, people, cultures and﻿ ﻿environmental ﻿﻿issues. Looking at a small songbird, and considering the thousands of miles that it has traveled, is a vivid way to connect ﻿students with other places and habitats. These migratory species depend on habitat in more than one geographic area, they have a unique ability to connect people for conservation..

The lessons in this module are divided into four categories: Migration, Conservation, Inquiry Investigations and Collaboration, and Citizen Science. You'll find overlap between each of these areas. Essentially, lessons can be completed in any order; however, we have suggested the lessons in a numerical order that we think works well. Links to each of these lessons can be found along the left navigation bar. The lessons are arranged thematically, here:

We recommend using this wiki to view lessons, since the wiki contains the links you'll need. But if you desire, there's a PDF of the lessons for easy printing (see the "Documents" section links along the left tool bar. Also note the supplements (journal, resource guide, student pre-test, student post-test, and evaluation) are linked there.