Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge Field Trip Guide

Contents: Student Behavior Guidelines Outdoor Hike Guidelines Exhibit Guidelines Making the Most of Your Visit

Student Behavior Guidelines

Many students view field trips as free days from school and their behavior often reflects that. It can be especially hard to control a class in an outdoor setting. Below are just a few tips on how to manage classes at Neal Smith, both in the building and outdoors.

Explain your expectations of students before leaving school and have the children repeat these both at school and before entering the building. One expectation we always stress is that students must be respectful, to their classmates, teachers, Neal Smith staff, and to the plants and wildlife. We ask for examples that are not respectful to the prairie such as picking flowers or squashing insects. When your class visits it is likely that there will be other visitors as well. Prepare your students for this by reminding them to talk quietly and walk calmly, instead of running around and yelling. Visitors are encouraged to explore the prairie off of the trails. To keep students with in sight and listening range, give them boundaries. For example, you might say you can wander anywhere in the prairie as long as you stay behind the trail and in front of the building. It is ideal to have boundaries on all sides of the group. o Another useful tip is to give students a step number they are allowed to take in to the prairie. We often allow students 15-20 steps away from the trail. o When you have a small, mature group or many adult chaperones you can always try telling them to stay within eyesight. Tell the chaperones or students that if they can no longer see you, they have gone too far and must come back.

There are several plants in the prairie students should avoid. Before you allow students to walk into the prairie, point out the plant. Ask students how they would describe the plant. After pointing out a few of its characteristics make sure students are confident identifying the plant on their own and then allow them to adventure away from the trail. For younger groups, simply avoid the areas where these plants may grow.

Outdoor Hike Guidelines

Many educators and group leaders shy away from leading outdoor activities such as hikes. Research shows going outside is good for you! Studies by Harvard Medical School have found that going outdoors can improve both your mental and physical health. Being outside can improve your concentration, help you heal faster, increase Vitamin D levels, and make a person happier in general. Even children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have been shown to concentrate more after spending time outside! With this in mind, use the behavior tips and the outdoor hiking tips provided below to guide your hikes. You dont have to be a nature expert to teach outside! Encourage students to use their senses when walking through the prairie. Ask students to find the softest or roughest plant in the prairie. See who can find the best smelling plant. Allow a few seconds of extreme quiet to listen to the prairie and ask what sounds they have heard.

Ask students to look for the signs of wildlife. Prompt your students to search for holes in the soil, scat (animal droppings), leaves that have been eaten, grass that has been laid down, tracks, and more! Kids will find so much evidence of the animals once they concentrate on finding it.

Request that students look for phenological (seasonal variations) changes in the prairie. For example, in the summer prairie grasses are green, but in the fall they turn browns, yellows, reds and purples, just like the leaves on a tree. Have students look at all the plants in bloom and wonder how they might change from season to season.

Incorporate your curriculum into the hike. If you are studying about the plant life cycle have students find plants in different life stages. To incorporate Iowa history, have students think about what the early settlers may have used prairie plants for. Connect it to a math concept by having students count different plants or estimate the number of plants in a certain area.

Allow students a few minutes to find a special spot in the prairie. Encourage students to look and listen to the prairie around them. To achieve the most out of this activity, tell students to sit alone (away from friends) and to be completely silent. To incorporate writing skills, bring pencils and paper or journals and have the students draw or write about what they find or how they feel.

The Overlook Trail and Tallgrass Trail offer a great view of the bison enclosure. Both are accessible from the Prairie Learning Center.

Exhibit Guidelines
Most groups use the scavenger hunts when going through the exhibits. It is best to have the students work with a partner or group to find the answers to the scavenger hunts. While the kids are going through the scavenger hunt, teachers and group leaders should feel free to point out important displays or concepts to their students. Use the following tips to help guide students through the exhibits and to emphasize ideas that you feel are most important.

Going through the exhibit is a good time to let your students have some independence and self-guided learning. Allow students time to investigate the levels or rooms on their own. Before moving on to the next room, bring all the students together. Keeping the group together ensures that everyone finishes around the same and that students take time to explore the exhibits. It is also a good time to have a brief discussion. Below are three questions that coordinate with the three different rooms. These can help clarify the purpose of each exhibit area. o 1st room: What is a prairie o 2nd room: What happened to it? o 3rd room: Will it grow back? The first display about prairie plant roots can be an easy display to start the group. Many people dont realize that most of a prairie plant is underground in the form of roots. If the age level is appropriate you can ask how many students it take to equal the depth of the roots of prairie plants. For example big bluestem, a common prairie grass, has roots that can be as deep as 12 feet. How many students would it take to equal that. To give students a visual, ask them to picture a basketball hoop sticking in the ground upside-down. Thats roughly how deep some roots can grow. This concept is a major difference between prairie plants and plants such as corn or the grass that grows on our lawns.

 As you enter the first room there are two interactive displays you can point out. The display The Long and Short of it is a blank map of the United States. Ask students if they can guess where Iowa is on this map. Have one student lay down their arm where they believe the Rocky Mountains are located. Connect this to geography or use this time to talk to students about why Iowa has the tall grass prairie and not a short grass prairie or other kind of habitat. The Rockies block a lot of moisture and wind, therefore the short grass prairie exists in areas like Colorado and the Dakotas. States such as Iowa and Illinois get more rain than those in the west but less than those in the east. Hence, Iowa was historically covered in tall grass prairie, not short grass or forests.

Use the How is an Ecosystem like a Song display to demonstrate to students how the animal and plant life create the prairie. When one piece of the ecosystem is taken, the system may change. Ask students to pull out different parts of the prairie and listen to how the sound changes. This is can be used as a metaphor to demonstrate how an ecosystem works.

In the second room of the exhibit there is a pole that describes how much topsoil currently is present in Iowa and how much the state historically had. If age appropriate, have kids stand next to the pole and see how much soil Iowa has lost in comparison to their height. How many of them would it take to equal the original amount of topsoil? How many to equal the amount we now have?

In the 3rd-5th grade scavenger hunt there is a question about the display in the environmental education lab. This display is located in the windows of the lab at the end of the display. This can be hard to find. At the end of the display there is an area with different animal furs. Each fur has a sign above it giving some background about the animal and its status in Iowa (whether it still inhabits the state or not). This display allows students to see and feel some of the animals that belong in the prairie. Most kids rush through this display without taking a chance to read about the animals. To force students to understand the purpose of the display, have students pick out their favorite animal/fur and to support that with information they learned from the description. For younger audiences have students find differences in the textures of the furs. Some furs may be rough and coarse while others may be soft.

Allow 10 minutes for a group discussion at the end of the exhibit. This discussion can be guided by questions from the chaperones and teachers or more open and led by the students comments and thoughts. Example discussion questions include: o What exhibit did you like best and why? o What didnt you like? o What new things did you learn? o How did learning about the prairie make you feel?

Making the Most of Your Visit to NSNWR

When you and your students visit Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, you are visiting a place like no other! Neal Smith is the largest reconstructed prairie in the United States, and the sights that you see on your visit, others may never get to experience. Follow the pointers below to get your students excited about the prairie at Neal Smith and to ensure your trip is one they will never forget!

First and foremost, be excited about visiting Neal Smith! The more excited you are for the trip, the more excited your students will be. Prepare your students for your visit. Talk with your students about where they will be visiting, and tell them why you chose to visit Neal Smith. Provide them with background information about the refuge and about prairies. We also highly recommend that your students where appropriate clothing. This should include pants in any weather, coats or layers, rain gear, and cold weather gear. Dont forget to prepare you chaperones as well! Chaperones can be useful tools to help with classroom management. Let them know what your expectations are for them before your trip. At Neal Smith we have a trash in/ trash out policy (generally from lunches). Some schools prefer to have the students keep their trash in their lunch box/bag and throw it away when they return home. If your group is up for a challenge, ask parents to prepare a zero waste lunch. This would mean a lunch where all items could be recycled, reused or composted. As you leave the refuge, travel through our bison and elk enclosure. Besides hiking the trails, this provides visitors with the best chance of seeing the animals. Prepare several talking points for the ride. These may connect to things you have been learning in the classroom or to the field trip that day. Here are a few examples of easy talking points you can use: o Herbivores/Carnivores: Bison and elk are herbivores, what are some carnivores? o How do these animals survive the hot summer or cold winter? o Why dont we have more bison and elk in the rest of Iowa? After your field trip, reflect with your students about the new ideas they learned. Our rangers always stress the importance of sharing discoveries students make in the prairie. Ask students to find a new plant, animals, smell, or texture they discovered and to share that after. Some teachers choose to have students write essays or draw pictures; this may be another helpful way for your students to reflect and absorb their visit.

For more information about Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge please visit: The Official Website: http://www.fws.gov/refuge/neal_smith/ The Friends of Neal Smith NWR: http://www.tallgrass.org/ Or find us on Facebook for the latest updates