Register Now for our Upcoming Fall Workshop in Grand Rapids!
Phenology Workshop
Saturday, October 24
St. Joseph’s Catholic School, Grand Rapids, MN
Register Now for our Upcoming Winter Institute/Workshops!
Winter Outdoor Classroom Institute
Saturday & Sunday, January 9 & 10, 2027
Jeffers Lodge, Prior Lake, MN
Winter Preschool Outdoors Workshop
Saturday, January 16, 2027
Jeffers Lodge, Prior Lake, MN
Investigating the Winter Landscape
Saturday, January 30, 2027
McColl Pond ELS, Savage, MN
All of our workshops are customized for your school
Target Audience: In-Service K-12 Teachers (Elementary, Middle School, High School teaching staff)
Pre-Service Team Teaching: Students in teaching methods college classes
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, Good Sense book, and a Tote Bag.
Team Teaching with Mother Nature
Team Teaching with Mother Nature for In-Service or Pre-Service Teachers.
Objectives for this workshop are to help educators:
- Increase observational skills
- Learn skills, strategies, and tools for successful teaching outdoors
- Use multidisciplinary journaling activities that provide “focus” for outdoor teaching
- Recognize your schoolyard as a teaching resource
- Identify lessons in your classroom curriculum that are best taught outdoors
- Identify state academic standards that can be attained by outdoor instruction
- Feel confident about outdoor instruction as a way to spark a student’s sense of wonder while increasing academic knowledge
- Incorporate phenology in daily lessons or morning meetings
- Have fun learning outdoors!
ELA Outdoors - New!
ELA Outdoors Workshop
Workshop Objectives:
- Learn techniques to engage students in outdoor learning while managing outdoor classroom spaces and expectations.
- Provide context for ELA lessons by using natural spaces as a new, sensory-rich venue for instruction that positively impacts student behavior, participation, and achievement.
- Participate in grade-level lessons connected to multiple ELA benchmarks.
- Discover how the outdoors motivates students to write routinely for a broad variety of purposes.
- Connect books to problem-solving activities and local culture and history.
- Exchange ideas through stories, discussions, and learn how outdoor learning can extend conversations.
- Reflect on ELA curriculum and workshop experiences to plan for outdoor instruction in the days, weeks, and school year(s) following the workshop.
Workshop logistics and follow-up:
4 hours: including about 3 hours outdoors with direct experience on your school grounds.
Receive Jeffers Foundation teaching resources to use during the workshop and beyond.
Schedule additional/follow-up workshops to sustain outdoor teaching and learning for your teaching staff. Additional workshops that embed ELA and interdisciplinary instruction include: Team Teaching with Mother Nature, Phenology, Nature Journaling, and more.
Target Audience: K-12 teachers (Elementary, Middle School, High School teaching staff)
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, Good Sense book, a Tote Bag, and a Class Set of Jeffers Journals.
Participating Teachers receive a Class Set of Jeffers Journals.
Target Audience: K-12 teachers (Elementary, Middle School, High School teaching staff)
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, EcoTime 2.0, Good Sense book, and a Tote Bag.
EcoTime 2.0
EcoTime 2.0 Workshop
- A themed-lesson format includes three types of lessons: Greeting, Science Activity, & Interdisciplinary
- Greetings build community and engage students in practices that develop an understanding of core ideas
- Science Activities promote investigation, analysis, and interpretation of data related to core ideas
- Interdisciplinary Lessons extend science instruction to include student research, designing solutions to engineering challenges, producing reports, building models, and more!
- Lessons enhance learning and engagement by connecting science to language arts, math, art, and engineering
Phenology
Phenology Workshop
Actively studying Phenology requires scientists to develop observation skills & to document biological and physical phenomena in relation to weather & climate patterns.
- Teachers take on the role of students as they collect & organize data, use data to describe & explain seasonal patterns, and develop models to represent both Earth & Life Science Core Ideas
- Prepares teachers to more effectively engage their students as scientists and help them notice, question, investigate, and document natural patterns
- Discover the reason for the seasons and how Minnesota plants, animals, and the natural environment adapt to seasonal changes
- Discuss phenology concepts that are embedded in over 25 science benchmarks across grades K-12, including: day length patterns, sun angle changes, night sky monthly & seasonal cycles, animal & plant life cycles & adaptations, and the cultural & historical understanding of seasonal changes
- Calendar in the Classroom & Journaling through the Seasons lessons will be modeled
Target Audience: K-12 teachers, including: Entire teaching staff at Elementary school, Science teachers in Middle & High School
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, Journaling through the Seasons book, and a Jeffers Minnesota Phenology Poster.
Participating teachers are eligible to receive a class set of Jeffers Journals to use with their students as they investigate Phenology throughout the school year.
Target Audience: K-12 teachers (Elementary, Middle School, High School teaching staff)
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, Good Sense Book, and a Tote Bag.
Calendar in the Classroom
Calendar in the Classroom Workshop
- Learn how to use the Calendar in the Classroom lessons in your classroom
- Get familiar with the five lesson themes: Astronomy, Gardening, Phenology, Water, & Weather
- Go over the information-packed Weatherguide Environment Calendar and Almanac
Preschool Outdoors
Preschool Outdoors Workshop
Workshop objectives:
- Recognize your outdoor space as a setting for place-based, seasonal, and authentic nature play and learning experiences
- Focus on observational skills to use one’s senses alongside curiosity to safely explore nature
- Learn how to encourage student inquiry and to be co-learners as you explore nature
- Develop rituals and routines that provide for safe and engaging play and learning experiences
- Recognize how nature-based play and learning meet expectations of Minnesota’s Early Childhood Indicators of Progress
- Build a relationship with Jeffers as a partner to help you provide engaging nature-based experiences for your preschoolers
Target Audience: PreK teachers (teachers of 3 – 5 year olds)
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Go Cards, Parents’ Guide, Foldable MN Nature Guide, and a Tote Bag.