BioBlitz Classroom Guide

What is a BioBlitz?

A BioBlitz is an activity where participants come together and come together to identify and classify as many species as possible in a specific location and set period of time.

BioBlitzes have a place in the classroom!

Integrating BioBlitzes into the classroom is an excellent way to facilitate outdoor and environmental learning for your students, with cross-curricular applications to science, technology, art, and social studies.

What does this look like?

BioBlitzes commonly occur on digital platforms such as iNaturalist, and involve participants taking pictures of their observations and uploading them to be shared with others.

While this is how large BioBlitz challenges usually run, there are a number of ways to integrate BioBlitz-themed activities into your classroom. At its core, BioBlitzes involve participants observing, classifying, and identifying species in a region.

All of the activities included in this guide will help your students develop their knowledge and skills distinguishing between different species of plants, birds, mammals, and insects. However, they do not require you or your students to take pictures of or upload your findings to a digital platform, making it more accessible for elementary students and educators.

Taking into account that outdoor learning is not always possible for classes due to a number of reasons, there are also activities included in this guide that can take place indoors, while still building their knowledge of the outdoors!