Assessment and Evaluation
How do you grade a nature journal page? First you need to clearly communicate to students ahead of time what the expectations are going to be. Here are two different checklists they can use to make sure they’ve included all the necessary elements.
This rubric from Wild Wonder has more options, so it is recommended that you don’t expect students to meet all of these items! You can either have students mark which ones you expect from them each day, or you can have them cross out the ones they don’t need to worry about.
Notice that none of these standards include grammar, spelling, or fine art language. It is too much to expect the students to explore their curiosity and wonder while also making everything look and read perfectly.
If you would like to grade the students on their art or writing skills, you can first have them create a nature journal page based off their own internal curiosity. Then you can have them use that page and other resources to create a draft, then move onto more “finished” page with careful composition, coloring, lines, as well as proper grammar, spelling, and correct factual information.
Of course, you don’t have to grade student’s nature journal pages! They can do it as fun, relaxing, mindful activity outdoors. It can be something that is totally student led and not linked directly to the curriculum. Having an opportunity to make something that is truly their own is a great way to slow down, process everything they’ve learned, and apply it in a way that makes sense to them.
Alignment to Standards
“How to Teach Nature Journaling” provides step-by-step lesson plans with connections to national standards and NGSS curriculum. It is free to download from John Muir Law’s store (go to page 120 to see the alignment section), or view individual activities on the Wild Wonder website.
Check out this resource on Sit Spots From Merry Lee at Goshen College. It aligns with Indiana Academic Standards for early childhood education, but Hawaii has similar standards, and it can be helpful to see how a sit spot activity can connect with curriculum.
More Resources
The book “Arting and Writing to Transform Education” is a great Hawaii based resource for aligning nature journaling with content standards and cultural understanding, bringing students through the process of observation, investigation, practice, drafts, and through a final, finished “art” piece.
Also be sure to check out the post on this site about creating field journals in the classroom, which includes a sample rubric for the project.