Picture Books and Primary Sources: Christmas Bird Count

While spending eleven months at the Library of Congress as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, I thought a lot about the power of pairing primary sources with picture books to deepen and extend the reading experience for students. In this new blog series, I'll share pairings and how you might use them in the classroom.

The Christmas Bird Count, originally the Christmas Bird Census, is the longest-running citizen science project in the world. In 1900, Frank Chapman, an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History, put forth a call in the December issue of his magazine, Bird Lore: instead of the traditional Christmas 'Side Hunts' (where two teams competed to see who could indiscriminately shoot the most game), why not count the birds instead?

The cover of the December 1900 issue of Bird Lore (L) and Frank Chapman's call for "A Christmas Bird-Census (R). Biodiversity Heritage Library, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/32602732 and https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/32602707.

That first bird census involved 27 volunteers in 25 locations from California to Canada. In all, about 90 species and 18,500 birds were documented. The annual count has continued to this day, with tens of thousands of volunteers across the Western hemisphere participating. Data collected by CBC citizen scientists has played an important role in ornithologists efforts to monitor bird populations and understand the role human impacts, including climate change, are having on them.

The Christmas Bird Count is a powerful example of citizen science, and a great way to help students understand that science is for everyone, regardless of profession or formal training. I recently introduced my second grade students to the Christmas Bird Count through close-looking and analysis of a newspaper article recapping the 1940 count. This instructional sequence could be used with older students as well.

"41st annual census shows two million birds in U.S." The Waterbury Democrat (Waterbury, CT), Feb 7 1941. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014085/1941-02-07/ed-1/seq-11/

I began by distributing copies of the article to students, and invited them to spend a few minutes looking at the article. Due to their age and widely varied reading levels, some students attempted to read the entire article while I encouraged others to look for words they knew and circle them. Next, students talked about what they noticed in pairs or small groups for a few minutes. Finally, we were ready for a whole class share-out. I recorded student thinking in three categories (I see, I think, I wonder) and was impressed with what my young students were able to glean from the article.

It was interesting to compare the analyses of each of my second grade classes. They really did think about the article in different ways!

After our analysis of the article, I read aloud the picture book Counting Birds: The Idea that Saved Our Feathered Friends by Heidi E. Y. Stemple. This book tells the story of Frank Chapman and his idea to create the Christmas Bird Census as well as connecting to a modern-day count. Beautiful collage-style illustrations bring the story to life, and the text includes a portion of Chapman's original call published in Bird Lore. Students were able to answer some of their initial questions after listening to the book and posed new questions as well.

We concluded the lesson by looking at copies of the December 1900 cover of Bird Lore as well as Chapman's published call. I introduced the idea of citizen science and explained how important this bird count has been to scientists.

Depending on the age of your students, this lesson could be extended in many different ways. Young students might spend time watching and identifying birds in their schoolyard. Older students might dig into CBC data or read about the scientific conclusions drawn from the data. In my classroom, I used this primary source and picture book pairing to launch our own Winter Bird Count at our outdoor campus. In preparation for our own count, I read a second picture book: Bird Count by Susan Edwards Richmond. This book delves into the nitty gritty details and how-to of how the count logistically works through a fictional CBC story. While we were not conducting an official count, I wanted to simulate the experience as closely as possible for students. More on our inaugural count in an upcoming post!

Picture books and primary sources: a powerful combination for learning!