Wow! This was an incredibly busy week at school and home. Unforuntately, I did not do a good job of recording P2F interaction. I do believe it was much more than 5 but I can not recall any other specifics.
Sept. 21 - 7 seeds:
1. It was a real pleasure to Phil this morning for the first time this year. He is very nice gentleman that has worked as a substitute in our building for more than 10 years. The first words out of his mouth were, "Hey Dave, I was thinking of you this weekend."
He went on to share his experience at the Raptor Trust in Millington, NJ with his grandchildren. We talked about the various species for several minutes. He vowed to take them back there.
2. Over the weekend, Lori e-mailed our magazine sale fundraiser. She was looking to subscribe to a bird magazine but was not sure which one would be most appealing to her. I replied with a summary of each of the 3 major periodicals - BirdWatcher's Digest, WildBird, and Birder's World. I also promised to bring examples of each with me to school on Monday.
I dropped of a handful of magazines to her classroom this morning. To my delight, she brought the magazines with her to lunch. A good portion of our lunch conversation focused on these bird magazines = )
After an almost embarrassing week, my Pledge to Fledge count inched up from 443 to a grand total of 450 seeds planted so far this year.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
P2F Week #2 - 355 Birding Seeds Planted
Sept 14 - 171 seeds: Today was a busy Pledge to Fledge Day = )
1. Students were passing a stuffed (plush NOT taxidermy!) animal around the room as they took turns answering various questions. When we first started the activity in each class, I asked what type of animal they were passing to each other. Without fail, most of the students provided a choral response of "PENGUIN!" To their shock, they were all wrong.
I graciously explained that the bird in question was actually an Atlantic Puffin. To my delight, this proclamation was not made by me in two of my classes as a few students pridefully shared the bird's true identity with their peers. I briefly compared and contrasted puffins and penguins for all 140 kids.
2. After a particularly interested exchange about current events, I blurted to one of the classes "you guys are almost as cool as vultures!" As you can imagine, they looked at me as though I was crazy.
I took a few moments to explain the valuable role that vultures play in our environment and their disgusting practices of thermo-regulation. This was met with chuckles, oh-wow's, and looks of horror from the 28 different faces in the room.
3. Sports practice affords many chances for bird observations. Tonight's soccer practice provided terrific looks at 3 Common Nighthawks flying northbound(?) over the fields. Needless to say, I politely punctuated our small talk with 3 other parents top point out these cool birds going right over their heads. Our next 5 minutes were spent chatting about nighthawks and birds in general.
Sept 15 - 1 seed: I spent about 10 minutes discussing hummingbirds and their feeder disputes with a fellow teacher at my school. Lori is not a birder (yet!) but she does have quite a love of hummingbirds. She has hummer posters around her classroom = )
Sept 16 - 140 seeds: One of the questions on today's assignment dealt with the Yucatan Peninsula. I could NOT pass up this P2F opportunity as we reviewed the material.
Upon first mention of our southern neighbor's geographic feature, I shared the Yucatan's role in spring migration. The specifics of the discussion was a bit different from class to class but including concepts of neotropical species, nocturnal migration, and fall-outs on the Gulf Coast of the southeastern US.
I was very pleased to have flocks of students asking me questions about this after class!
Sept 17 - 27 seeds: My class is adorned with many bird images and artifacts. This includes some stuffed waterfowl, decoys, posters, and a shelf devoted to bird books. Near the end of a class today, I had a student ask me if the "big duck" was real. I explained that the bird was real but wasn't a duck.
I opened the ID up to the class. Many knew that it was a goose of some sort. Once the ID of Canada Goose was revealed, the expected question of "don't they just live in Canada?" was mulled over by the class in the moments prior to class dismissal.
Sept 18 - 29 seeds:After a full week of school, this one class was realizing that they were surrounded by a bird decor in my room. They started pointed out the calendar, binoculars, carvings, and posters. They were told to keep an eye out as new items are often replaced by different bird-relics throughout the year.
After week #2, my Pledge to Fledge stands at 443 birding seeds dropped. I'm curious how long it will be before they start to germinate?!
1. Students were passing a stuffed (plush NOT taxidermy!) animal around the room as they took turns answering various questions. When we first started the activity in each class, I asked what type of animal they were passing to each other. Without fail, most of the students provided a choral response of "PENGUIN!" To their shock, they were all wrong.
I graciously explained that the bird in question was actually an Atlantic Puffin. To my delight, this proclamation was not made by me in two of my classes as a few students pridefully shared the bird's true identity with their peers. I briefly compared and contrasted puffins and penguins for all 140 kids.
2. After a particularly interested exchange about current events, I blurted to one of the classes "you guys are almost as cool as vultures!" As you can imagine, they looked at me as though I was crazy.
I took a few moments to explain the valuable role that vultures play in our environment and their disgusting practices of thermo-regulation. This was met with chuckles, oh-wow's, and looks of horror from the 28 different faces in the room.
3. Sports practice affords many chances for bird observations. Tonight's soccer practice provided terrific looks at 3 Common Nighthawks flying northbound(?) over the fields. Needless to say, I politely punctuated our small talk with 3 other parents top point out these cool birds going right over their heads. Our next 5 minutes were spent chatting about nighthawks and birds in general.
Sept 15 - 1 seed: I spent about 10 minutes discussing hummingbirds and their feeder disputes with a fellow teacher at my school. Lori is not a birder (yet!) but she does have quite a love of hummingbirds. She has hummer posters around her classroom = )
Sept 16 - 140 seeds: One of the questions on today's assignment dealt with the Yucatan Peninsula. I could NOT pass up this P2F opportunity as we reviewed the material.
Upon first mention of our southern neighbor's geographic feature, I shared the Yucatan's role in spring migration. The specifics of the discussion was a bit different from class to class but including concepts of neotropical species, nocturnal migration, and fall-outs on the Gulf Coast of the southeastern US.
I was very pleased to have flocks of students asking me questions about this after class!
Sept 17 - 27 seeds: My class is adorned with many bird images and artifacts. This includes some stuffed waterfowl, decoys, posters, and a shelf devoted to bird books. Near the end of a class today, I had a student ask me if the "big duck" was real. I explained that the bird was real but wasn't a duck.
I opened the ID up to the class. Many knew that it was a goose of some sort. Once the ID of Canada Goose was revealed, the expected question of "don't they just live in Canada?" was mulled over by the class in the moments prior to class dismissal.
Sept 18 - 29 seeds:After a full week of school, this one class was realizing that they were surrounded by a bird decor in my room. They started pointed out the calendar, binoculars, carvings, and posters. They were told to keep an eye out as new items are often replaced by different bird-relics throughout the year.
After week #2, my Pledge to Fledge stands at 443 birding seeds dropped. I'm curious how long it will be before they start to germinate?!
P2F Week #1 - 88 Birding Seeds Planted
Each weekly Pledge to Fledge reflection will include highlights and the running total. These first few installments are a backlog from throughout September. Unfortunately, I did not jot down all bird-related interaction = (
Sept. 8th - 10 seeds: Our first day back to school was filled with faculty meetings. WHat a fun and exciting day. Not surprisingly, I had several teachers coming up to me about recent bird sightings and asking for either identification help or some other info on their newly discovered feathered friends. As they shared their stories, I gladly extended the conversations beyond simple ID and into distribution, related species, and conservatrion issues. These exchanges included:
- Rich's Red-tailed Hawk sightings with his daughter -
- the Turkey Vulture in Tim's neighborhood
- Jen's daughter growing love of Blue-footed Boobies which led to us talking about our more local Northern Gannets.
Sept. 11th - 78 seeds: My first full day with students was bittersweet. Most of our discussion focused on the events of this day in 2001. There were some profound and insightful perspective shared by the young minds in my room.
Following a decidedly solemn class discussion, I was asked a similar question in 3 of my classes today - "Do you like birds?"
Apparently my bird-nerd reputation precedes me as these incoming students already knew of my avian appreciation. I fielded the questions my introducing them to the terms "birding" and "birder".
Sept. 8th - 10 seeds: Our first day back to school was filled with faculty meetings. WHat a fun and exciting day. Not surprisingly, I had several teachers coming up to me about recent bird sightings and asking for either identification help or some other info on their newly discovered feathered friends. As they shared their stories, I gladly extended the conversations beyond simple ID and into distribution, related species, and conservatrion issues. These exchanges included:
- Rich's Red-tailed Hawk sightings with his daughter -
- the Turkey Vulture in Tim's neighborhood
- Jen's daughter growing love of Blue-footed Boobies which led to us talking about our more local Northern Gannets.
Sept. 11th - 78 seeds: My first full day with students was bittersweet. Most of our discussion focused on the events of this day in 2001. There were some profound and insightful perspective shared by the young minds in my room.
Following a decidedly solemn class discussion, I was asked a similar question in 3 of my classes today - "Do you like birds?"
Apparently my bird-nerd reputation precedes me as these incoming students already knew of my avian appreciation. I fielded the questions my introducing them to the terms "birding" and "birder".
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