Habitat Ecology Training Program, A Project to Train Elementary School Teachers in the Use of Zoological Collections to Enhance Science Education

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The purpose of this program enhance the ability of elementary school teachers to use the collections of zoos as living laboratories for their students. Teachers from New York City as well as teams of teachers from across the United States will take part in the project. To support such widespread activity, fifteen additional zoos will participate directly sending a team of zoo educators and local teachers. Ecology will be the overarching theme of the inservice activity and the participants will learn to use the zoo as an outdoor classroom for teaching about the earth's biomes and animal adaptations to habitats. Specifically, the workshop series will highlight problems associated with endangered species, and will target the study of rain forests, deserts, wetlands, deciduous forests and grasslands. As a result of the inservice a teachers' manual will be produced which will support the participants as they work with others to improve the teaching of life science at the elementary level. The manual will also have many suggestions about inquiry activities that can be done at zoos or before or after visits. It will be a valuable resource to teachers as well as others who are responsible introducing children to wealth of ideas, concepts and process that can be learned by studying animals in the zoo environment. The cost sharing for the project will be thirty percent of the NSF portion.