The online edition of Aliens In Your Neighborhood is available under the Quicklinks option on the homepage of the National Parks nearest you. All information available in the textbook edition can be accessed online (online lesson plans and other information may be available as downloadable .pdf files requiring Acrobat™ Reader^® 5.0). Links are provided to resources within the NPS database and Internet sites outside the NPS pages.

Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument Along the Snake River

The upcoming textbook edition of Aliens In Your Neighborhood will be designed primarily for use in conjunction with field studies and projects you might design for your nearby National Park.  The curriculum is equally adapted to studies in the schoolyard, your community, or any other resource base to which you may have access.  Lessons within both the online and upcoming textbook are designed for the classroom (concept development, planning, and prediction) and for fieldwork at the park (investigations and contributions). The range of lessons, however, is also designed to work within the framework of your school’s science curriculum, with activities conducted on school grounds or nearby areas within the community.

Whether you use the textbook or online edition, it is important for you, the teacher, to understand the thread of inquiry learning that runs throughout. For those not familiar with the nuance of inquiry, process science, and content, an inquiry mind map is provided. The four stages of inquiry used with Aliens In Your Neighborhood include:

• Concept development
• Planning & Prediction
• Investigation
• Summary - Contributions as Citizen Scientists

Concept development is considered the standardized science curriculum in your school that provides students with the basic earth and life sciences needed as background information when conducting research and field investigations. Aliens In Your Neighborhood is not intended to replace your curriculum or cause unnecessary modification to an existing curriculum. It is designed to serve as an integrating theme that takes advantage of the curriculum you’ve already developed. Concept development provides your students with the foundation knowledge needed prior to application of that knowledge in the field investigations at your National Park site.

The Planning and prediction stage of inquiry learning allows the students to develop their own questions and follow their own interests as revealed during concept development. The students determine the area of interest, skills needed, and a plan of action. >With a written plan, information provided by the NPS websites, CD-ROM, or resource manager, and sharing of that information in context with their fellow scientists (classmates!) they predict the possible results of their investigation Planning and prediction provide your students with the roadmap needed to discover the answers to questions that are relevant and meaningful to them.

The investigation stage is the scientific journey your students take at their National Park. It is where they use a range of process skills ( inquiry mind map) to gather data that can support or refute their predictions. Investigation provides your students with real-time field explorations and direct application of prior concepts and skills they have learned in the classroom.

Contributions as “Citizen Scientists” are the most important and often the most rewarding aspects of inquiry learning. At this stage the tiring and ageless question, “Why do I have to learn this?” becomes clear when the students discover that the questions they posed, their investigation, and their findings can provide valuable data to the resource specialist and managers of our National Parks. Species type, population levels, GIS mapping, and answers to authentic questions meet three of the five strategies established by the NPS ( Public Awareness, Inventory & Monitoring, and Conducting Research). Contributions as citizen scientists provide your students with an opportunity to make their education contextual and locally relevant, i.e., kids can make a difference!

Last Updated: October, 2003