Table 1 Missions from Mission: Explore zoo, call of the wild Mission 1: Mission 2: Mission 3: Mission 4:
Mission 5: Mission 6: Mission 7: Mission 8:
Mission 9:
Tall trees – find the tallest tree in the zoo. Where is the tree located at? Why do you think the tallest tree is there? Draw what the tree looks like.
Follow your ears – when you hear an interesting animal sound, follow it to the source. Come up with a mission dance to the beat of the sound as you follow.
Animals are everywhere – find an animal outside of the zoo exhibit. Where did you find this animal? What is it doing? Draw it here. Give the animal you found a name.
Conversations – find a friendly animal and talk to it. What animal did you find? In what part of the zoo is the animal? What does it say back to you? How can you figure out what it wants?
What’s that smell? – make this page smell like the zoo. Find three different scents. Something new – look for something you’ve never seen before. Draw what you discovered. Dinner time – find an animal that is eating. Draw their food. What do you think it tastes like?
Caged and uncaged – which animals can roam free outside of a cage at the zoo? Why do you think they get to roam uncaged?
Making tracks – draw your hand. Now draw some of the animal tracks that you see. Compare.
Mission 10: Walk like an animal – animals cover distance in different ways. Think of the different types of ways that you have seen animals move in the zoo (for example: using wings, walking on two or four legs). Why do you think they move this way?
Mission 11: Mission 12:
Call of the wild – list some of the sounds you hear at the zoo. What might they be trying to say?
Turn yourself into a zoo exhibit – what noises would you make? What would you eat? How would you move? Draw your exhibit.
Mission 13: World map – draw a map of the continents based on the animals you’ve seen at the zoo. Mission 14:
How the zoo looks to you – now that you’ve had a great day at the zoo, imagine the path you took and how the zoo looks. Draw out your own mental map of the zoo.
Activity: Explore Zoo The beginning of the Mission: Explore Zoo, Call of the Wild
is composed of three parts: 1. the explorer’s oath, 2. exploration rules, and 3. a table of contents of missions to complete. The oath instills learners with the values to leave no
trace, be honest, protect and care for their world, and to never stop exploring. The rules inform learners that the mis- sions may be completed in any order, may be started and fin- ished at any time, and should be done with a commitment to science and exploration. The 14 missions follow on separate pages; each mission has a catchy and fun title and includes directions for completion. The missions can be found listed in Table 1. The last page of the booklet is a “Mission Accomplished” certificate for the explorer. As you now know, the goal of using guerilla geography
is to systematically reinvent how we teach learners to think about and engage with the world around them. To do this as part of your own educational program, we have created a list of guidelines to consider (see Table 2). We consider mission building to be a constructivist activity, in that “knowledge is not transmitted directly from one person to another but must be actively built by the learner.”7 We would like to note that
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not all guidelines listed will be appropriate for every learn- ing program and to tailor the following recommendations to your individual program and to meet your own learning objectives and goals. Assessment and evaluation is certainly possible if the
activity learning objectives call for it, even though it is cur- rently not common in the pedagogy. We offer three possible ideas to measure student learning; again these are general ideas and because of the unique and individualistic nature of guerilla geography they should be adjusted to fit mid-activ- ity assessment or final evaluation needs.
Assessment and Evaluation Measure #1: Pick one
mission and have all learners share their findings and why their findings were important to them; this measure cor- responds with the idea that guerilla geography is personal to the learner and encompasses creativity and idea sharing. Encourage learners to use creative methods to communicate place and their understanding of place. Assessment and Evaluation Measure #2: Have learn-
ers take turns leading the group on a mission. This enables measurement of the process and learner action, not the end result or perception. It would also be possible to have other learners in the group evaluate their leader and create a group
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