Journey North engages students in a global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change. K-12 students become involved in citizen science and share their own field observations with classmates across North America. They track the coming of the seasons through the migration patterns of monarch butterflies, robins, hummingbirds, whooping cranes, gray whales, bald eagles— and other birds and mammals; the budding of plants; changing sunlight; and other natural events. Find migration maps, pictures, standards-based lesson plans, activities and information to help students make local observations and fit them into a global context.

This lesson can be added to the study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, specifically when it’s time to release your classroom monarchs in the fall. If your class isn’t studying monarchs, but the monarch migration is observed in your area, this is a lesson that could be used to find out more.The pursuits addressed are skills and intellectualism. The skills in this case are reading a map and gathering details from a text. Intellect is the practice of using skills to increase the understanding of the world around you, the practice of reflecting on how one uses a skill. According to Gholdy Muhammad in Cultivating Genius, Intellectualism is knowledge of people, places, things and concepts and the ability to put this knowledge into action. As learning takes place, one asks, “What am I becoming smarter about?” The students are using the pursuit of intellectualism to discover how science research works to discover new things about the world around them. 

Details: This lesson can be added to the study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, specifically when the children are learning about monarch migration. It is suggested to use this lesson after Monarch Butterflies Lesson 1. Pursuits: Identity is questioning who you are, how others see you and who you want to become. Students will learn about each other and further define their own identities in relation to their culture, their families and their culture. Skills are writing, collaborating with others, and reading informational texts Criticality: Students are deepening their understanding of the intersections of a group's culture with the economic and land-use expectations of the economic powers of the world. In this case the people in the lesson chose to follow their traditions and culture  over these expectations and found an alternative path to support themselves economically.