Children & Nature network

Schoolyard Box Turtle Monitoring

By Mary Young-Lutz

Mary Young-Lutz is an Environmental Science Teacher at Dominion High School.

Schoolyard teaching offers students at Dominion High School in Sterling, Virginia many learning opportunities across diverse content areas. For example, 11th and 12th grade students in the Environmental Explorations class use the outdoor environment to identify plant and animal species, monitor water quality, and study the effects of erosion on stream life. One of the activities we conduct is to monitor the Eastern box turtle populations around the school. Students work with the State Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to monitor the health of the turtle population.

Students walk the grounds around the school looking for box turtles. When a turtle is found, students collect and record data on weight, sex, size and location of the individual animal. The turtles are then tagged and released back to the exact spot where they were found. At the end of the year, the data are sent to the state game department. One student stated that she felt like the information she collected was important because the data actually “went somewhere” and didn’t “die in her notebook at the end of the year.” Another special education student said that “he felt like a real scientist.” It is obvious that students feel connections to the land and animals from this activity, plus we cover numerous science standards in the process.

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