Maple Watch School
Almost every school in New England has a sugar maple right outside the classroom windows. The tree is right there, a ready subject for studies of climate change and much more. The sugar maple outside your school also connects students with their local heritage: Chances are some of the students and many of their older relatives have generations of experience making sugar.
Maple Watch will offer teachers and their students simple lesson plans on climate change and maple anatomy and physiology. These lessons will include opportunities to use space technology and Earth systems perspectives, to make maps, and to blend science studies with math, art, and English.
In return, Maple Watch invites teachers and students to give scientists a hand at observing and reporting on how the sugar maple is doing. The measures which school children make of leaf size, foliage color and bud health can help us build a wide range view of maple health.
Teachers and school children might also help Maple Watch to find large sugarbushes and sugar makers with historic records of production. Your class might want to interview grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbors about the history of sugar maples in your town. One sugarbush in your community might be ideal for Maple Watch study in the laboratory and from space.
If you would like to be a Maple Watch school, please email me ....
