Site Selection

• Choose an accessible site that is within a 20-minute travel time from school.
• Use quality urban green space with diversity of insects, trees, birds, butterflies, and/or mushrooms.
• Permission to use site is easily attainable.
• Pick a location that links two natural areas.

• Lead pre-activities to teach students how to use field guides and a dichotomous key.
• Play a game that acts as a "practice run" in the classroom. Have students role-play being the organisms and rehearse calling out the numbers and using the rope.
• Familiarize the class with the ID cards. After looking at the cards, create a list of what students hypothesize they will find at the site.
• Utilize the UrbanWatch quiz online.
• Take two lab periods to have the students use the UrbanWatch CD tutorial. During the first day introduce UrbanWatch, Chicago Wilderness, and give time to browse the CD. The second day, have students use the CD and answer questions. It is best if you ask questions that measure students understanding of the procedure, their ability to analyze data, and questions that resemble those found on the UW website.
• Conduct a "practice run" on the parkway in front of the school. This practice helps students become familiar with the BUS route walk, use of the rope, use of rapid ID cards, and collection of data.
• Make up an activity that centers on the use of the rapid ID cards-the construction and analysis of food webs from two hypothetical urban green spaces. In this way, students become more familiar with the layout and content of the cards, and hopefully, they are better able to utilize them in the field. They also learn how information collected from the BUS can be used to evaluate the biodiversity of the site.

• Students learn to:
  • use certain characteristics to identify and differentiate organisms common to their own environments.
  • appreciate urban ecosystems for the services they provide.
  • become stewards of the local environment.
• UrbanWatch fits into:
  • Class discussion, projects, and laboratories centered around the urban environment and urban and suburban development directed toward sustainability of Chicago's unique and biologically diverse ecosystems.
  • General Environmental Science curricula and topics including ecosystems and populations.

• Use multiple class periods.
• Complete the site survey before doing the BUS. This gives students the opportunity to see the site before collecting data.
• Divide the BUS route into sections. Divide the class into teams of three to six students that are responsible for each part of the BUS route. On the teams, have each student take on a specific role or task. For example, team leader, data person, rope holders, and monitors. Within your class, have a student(s) focus on a specific taxonomy group such as a wildflower specialist, bird specialist, tree specialist, mushroom specialist, and butterfly specialist. These specialists would carry field guides related to their topic and try to identify species that are not on the ID cards.
• Expect to spend more than one 45-minute class period on UrbanWatch. Do prep work during class and have students stay after school and/or on weekends to finish.

• The more you do UrbanWatch before the field experiences the better.
• It takes time to work out the kinks. Practice sessions, the CD, quiz, and activities make the survey go more smoothly.
• If you have multiple classes participating, have each class do the same BUS and compare their findings. Then, submit one set of data.
• Use lots of visuals and when you are on the site bring different field guides to compare and to get the best possible answer.
• When drawing the BUS route, accurately portray the site.
• There are so many ways to integrate this program into an environmental science class. It takes long hours of preparation and some patience with the initial implementation, but in the end, it is very rewarding.

• Publications by Chicago Wilderness such as: Biodiversity Recovery Plan, Protecting Nature in You Community, & Atlas of Biodiversity.
• Publications by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources such as: Forest Trees of Illinois, Butterflies of Illinois (co-published with the Illinois Natural History Survey), & Biodiversity of Illinois CD's.
• Tree Finder
• Audubon & Peterson field guides on trees, wildflowers, mushrooms, insects, and butterflies.
• Searches on the internet for better pictures of plants.