Eco-Healthy Lunch

SUMMARY: Students analyze their own lunches and discover the enormous amount of waste produced by the typical school lunch. Then they generate ideas about how to pack an Eco-Healthy Lunch for their Hidden Villa field trip. DURATION: 1-2 days GRADES: 2nd-5th

Note Taking

SUMMARY: Students learn three different note taking styles to aid them in writing down their discoveries during the Hidden Villa field trip in an organized way. This supports the development of students' note taking skills. Note taking during the field trip also supports student academic success in classroom projects integrated with the field trip. DURATION: 2 to 5 days GRADES: 2nd-5th

Hidden Villa's History

SUMMARY: Students delve into the history of the Bay Area and California through the study of Hidden Villa's fascinating and inspiring history. They also learn about social justice and the history of many of its struggles through learning about the lives of visionaries Josephine and Frank Duveneck, founders of Hidden Villa. DURATION: 1-5 days or more GRADES: 3nd-5th

Conflict Resolution

SUMMARY: Students learn and practice four basic steps that can be used to resolve conflicts that arise in a variety of situations. Each step is introduced and practiced separately. At the end of the unit, students implement all four steps in role plays. DURATION: 5 to 8 days GRADES: 2nd-5th

Friendly Letters

SUMMARY: Students write thank you letters to their Hidden Villa guides, sharing their favorite experiences and acknowledging how their guides helped them. DURATION: 2 to 6 days GRADES: 2nd-3rd, can be adapted to 4th-5th

Personal Narratives

SUMMARY: Students use the excitement of their Hidden Villa field trip to facilitate learning the personal narrative writing style. As part of this particular unit on personal narrative, students learn to analyze what they learned from their chosen experience. This project can be extended into a very powerful family-school activity (separate unit). DURATION: 1 to 3 weeks GRADES: 2nd-5th

Fiction Stories

SUMMARY: Students use the familiar Hidden Villa habitats as the setting for their fiction stories. Each student selects an animal from one of these habitats as the main character of their story and uses scientific information about this animal to support their character and plot development. DURATION: 2 to 4 weeks GRADES: 2nd-5th

Poetry

SUMMARY: Students use their experiences at Hidden Villa as inspiration to write poems. This unit offers many concrete ideas about how to teach the multifaceted genre of poetry. DURATION: 1 to 3 weeks GRADES: 3rd-5th, can be adapted to 2nd

Information Reports

SUMMARY: Students use the information they learned at Hidden Villa to learn to write informational essays. The common Hidden Villa experiences allow for extensive teaching modeling and facilitate peer support during the writing process. This project also offers significant review and deepening of the science and social studies standards introduced during the field trip. DURATION: 3 to 5 weeks GRADES: 4th-5th, can be adapted to 3rd

Family Writing Activities

SUMMARY: Students share their final, published Hidden Villa personal narrative with somebody in their family. Then students guide this family member through each of the writing steps to produce his or her own published personal narrative. (An adaptation for fiction writing also included.) DURATION: 4 to 6 weeks GRADES: 2nd-5th

Food Chains

SUMMARY: Students use their observations at Hidden Villa to drive further classroom study of ecological food chains. There are many separate activities in this unit that can be used together as a lengthy life science curriculum or taken apart and integrated individually into other state-adopted science programs. DURATION: 1 to 4 weeks GRADES: 3rd-5th, can be adapted to 2nd

Mini-Habitats

SUMMARY: Students use their observations of Hidden Villa's mini-habitats to drive further classroom study of animals' adaptations to their habitat. As an end project, students produce a representation of their chosen mini-habitat complete with captions explaining how each animal is adapted to its habitat. Optionally, students can also use the information on their poster to write informational essays. DURATION: 2 to 4 weeks GRADES: 3rd-4th, can be adapted to 5th

Nutrition

SUMMARY: This unit is connected to Hidden Villa's emphasis on Eco-Healthy Lunches and on developing student knowledge of the origins of what they eat. Using Reciprocal Teaching strategies, students learn about the basic components of food. They exercise graphing and fraction skills while studying food nutritional labels. They develop their critical thinking skills by using the information from their study to analyze media influences on what they eat. DURATION: 1 to 4 weeks GRADES: 4th-5th, can be adapted to 2nd-3rd

Hidden Villa Eco-Play

SUMMARY: Students read, practice and perform all or part of a play based on how human actions can hurt natural ecosystems that takes place at Hidden Villa. It is a bilingual (Spanish/English) play that very purposefully addresses the importance of speaking more than one language. English-only classes can enjoy reading the first scene as an example of how to dramatize food chain links in an entertaining manner. DURATION: 1 day to 6 weeks GRADES: 3rd-5th

Personal Action

SUMMARY: Students make connections between their Hidden Villa experiences and their daily lives. Then students make and monitor personal goals that reflect their Hidden Villa knowledge. DURATION: 1 to 2 weeks GRADES: 4th-5th, can be adapted to 2nd-3rd

Murals

SUMMARY: Students design and create a class mural that demonstrates their ecological knowledge. DURATION: 1 to 2 weeks GRADES: 2nd-5th

Eco-Fair

SUMMARY: Students use everything they have learned about the environment to make informational posters about different topics to present to other classes, their families and the community. DURATION: 1 to 3 weeks GRADES: 2nd-5th

Performances

SUMMARY: Students prepare, practice and perform poems, plays or stories based on their Hidden Villa experiences and environmental understanding. DURATION: 1 to 3 weeks GRADES: 2nd-5th

Persuasive Letters

SUMMARY: Using their knowledge about the environment, students will choose an issue of ecological importance, identify a person or organization that has influence over the issue, decide what actions they would to see implemented and write a persuasive letter. DURATION: 1 to 3 weeks GRADES: 4th-5th, can be adapted to 2nd-3rd

Composting

SUMMARY: Students create and maintain a class compost pile using the organic waste from their school lunches. DURATION: 1 month-year GRADES: 2nd-5th