Assessment and Evaluation

Nature journaling is a great tool for exploration and becoming more connected to nature. But in a classroom, projects often need to have clear expectations that you can to clearly communicate to students ahead of time, so they know what’s expected of them. Having a checklist or rubric helps with grading, too. Here are some different checklists they can use to make sure they’ve included all the necessary elements.

The 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 often 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.