Final Report Form REAP Conservation Education Program Please submit this completed form electronically as a Word document to Susan Salterberg [email protected] (CEP contract monitor). Project number (example: 12-04): 13-14 Project title: Investigating Shelter, Investigating a Midwestern Wickiup Organization’s name: University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist Grant project contact: Amy Pegump Report prepared by: Lynn M. Alex Today’s date: March 17, 2014 Were there changes in the direction of your project (i.e., something different than outlined in your grant proposal)? Yes No If yes, please explain the changes and the reason for them: No major changes in the direction of the project, although an extension was received to complete one final task. Slight change to line item categories on the budget, but approval was received in advance for these. Note: Any major changes must be approved by the Board as soon as possible. Contact CEP Contract Monitor, Susan Salterberg, at [email protected] or 319-337-4816 to determine whether board approval is needed for your changes. When the REAP CEP Board reports to the Legislature on the impact of REAP CEP funds on environmental education in Iowa, what one sentence best portrays your project’s impact? Response limited to 375 characters. Character limits include spaces. This upper elementary curriculum provides authentic, inquiry-based lessons for educators and their students to learn more about Iowa's early environments, natural resources, and the interrelationship with early human residents and lifeways. Please summarize your project below in the space provided. Your honesty and frankness is appreciated, and will help strengthen environmental education in Iowa. Project’s purpose and targeted audience (limit 800 characters): The project created an inquiry-based curriculum for educators (formal and informal) and upper elementary students throughout Iowa and the Midwest. Using authentic sources, students apply archaeological and historical inquiry to the study of the wickiup--a shelter type used by the Meskwaki and other Native Americans of the upper Midwest. The curriculum offers appealing, hands-on lessons to engage students in a better understanding of scientific inquiry, environmental/human connections, and concepts of conservation and heritage stewardship. It addresses national education standards, Common Core State Standards, and achieving science literacy. Provide a self-assessment of your project’s educational impact (outcomes). List up to three of the most relevant impacts outlined in your grant proposal, as well as data that document whether these impacts were met. Include the successes and challenges faced and, if the challenges were overcome, how (limit 6,000 characters). 1) Participants will know more about the natural resources and lifeways of early Iowa people and how the two are interrelated. 2.) Participants will learn how and why the study of archaeological (scientific) and historic evidence helps answer questions about the past. 3). Participants will apply information from the past to help solve modern problems related to the conservation and stewardship of resources. Workshop surveys, small group discussion, and all-group discussion at workshops, and an online survey were the primary evaluation tools utilized to measure the quality and potential impact of the draft curricular materials. Workshop attendees proceeded through the draft curricular materials, modeling lessons and assessements. Their written and oral evaluations indicated the positive educational impact of the project. Their specific recommendations provided guidance on edits to the curriculum including replacing/adding vocabulary words, making lessons more interactive, clarifying maps and other graphics, adding more specific descriptions and illustrations of environmental resources, 1 and addressing issues of cultural sensitivity. Draft curricular materials were edited based on these recommendations and others provided by professional archaeologists, archaeological-educators, historians, and classroom and environmental educators as listed in the original grant proposal. List up to three of the most important outputs outlined in your grant proposal, whether these goals were met, and why or why not. (Limit 2,000 characters.) 1.)As planned, the developing curriculum was presented to ~70 formal and informal educators who attended the four workshops conducted on behalf of the project. 2).Educator input at the workshops provided evaluation and review of the materials. This greatly enhanced the final curriculum. 3). The curriculum was made available online from national Project Archaeology (www.projectarchaeology.org) January 24, 2014 and will be presented at future teacher workshops. It has the potential to reach hundreds of young students in Iowa, the Midwest, and throughout the U.S. as educators teach students and share with other educators. Provide a self-assessment of your project, including what aspects of the project worked well and what aspects of the project did not go as planned. Explain what you would do differently if you did the project again, and why. (Limit 5,000 characters.) Overall, the project proceeded as planned although an extension was provided to complete an online survey. Two initial teacher workshops were scheduled for June, 2013, but the scheduled workshop at Iowa Lakeside Lab did not have sufficient enrollment to pursue, and the Glenwood workshop only had seven participants. To create the opportunity to engage a larger number of educators in the project and garner their suggestions for the curriculum, two additional teacher workshops were arranged at the Meskwaki Settlement School near Tama, Iowa, and at Wickiup Hill Outdoor Learning Center, Toddville, Iowa. Having input from Meskwaki teachers (at the Settlement), and enviromental educators at Wickiup Hill, enriched the content/quality of the curriculum. A curriculum developed by non-Meskwaki educators that incorporates the suggestions/recommendations of Meskwaki educators and descendants is unique for Iowa. Environmental educators (at the Wickiup Hill workshop and at the Midwest Environmental Education Conferenence workshop), likewise, were enthused about the materials and offered very specific suggestions on how to improve the environmental educational components. This is one of the first times that a Project Archaeology Investigating Shelter curriculum in development has been reviewed by a significant number of environmental educators. While paper evaluations were collected from individual participants at workshops, offering more time for focus- or all-group discussion/evaluation would have been desirable. Were there any negative outputs or impacts/outcomes, and/or concerns about the accuracy of your evaluation data, which you did not list above? If so, please identify the most relevant ones and explain. (Limit 800 characters.) While the evaluations completed offered numerous open-ended suggestions regarding grade-level-appropriate and environmental education content, they were often less specific regarding how the curriculum alligned to Common Core State Standards (CCSS). One explanation might be that Iowa educators themselves are only just becoming familiar with and incorporating CCSS into their teaching. Fortunately, National Project Archaeology and Iowa's Project Archaeology facilitators have worked to create this alignment. The workshop presented to the Meskwaki educators did not include the teacher section of the full draft-curriculum due to a printing error not detected by the project coordinator. These teachers only received the full draft of the curriculum after the workshop Testimonials from people influenced through your project help the CEP Board substantiate the need for this program. Please provide one but no more than three testimonials from your project. If possible, include identification information such as name, grade and subject taught, school and city. If you provide this information, you are responsible to secure written permission from the person quoted for use of the testimonial by REAP CEP. (Limit 1,000 characters.) "The Investigating Shelter: Investigating a Midwestern Wickiup" unit will help ensure that Iowa students have an opportunity to learn of our area’s past inhabitants, how they used natural resources, and the connections to today. Training a cadre of Iowa teachers will help to ensure that these skills are widespread throughout the state and will continue into the future. Environmental Education must be part of our school curriculum to help teach students to be good stewards of our land and resources. The Investigating a Midwestern 2 Wickiup curriculum unit will give Iowa teachers the tools to do so now and many years in the future." Diane Moritz, 5th/6th grade science and 5th grade language arts teacher, Wilton Elementary, Wilton, IA Please indicate which of the following environmental education goals listed below were met through your project. (Check all that apply). Understand environmental processes and systems (such as the earth as a physical system, the living environment, humans and their societies, and/or environment and society) Develop skills for understanding and addressing environmental issues Understand personal and civic responsibility Develop lifelong learning skills such as critical thinking, questioning and analysis skills Understand that human well-being is tied to environmental quality Understand and forge connections with their immediate surroundings Conserve and protect