Lead your elementary students through background research into how trees are classified. Show your youngsters pictures of different species of trees, including educating them about the difference between evergreen and deciduous plants. Gather a sample of leaves and allow your elementary students to touch them and look at them through magnifying glasses to get a good impression of what they will be doing when they leave the classroom. Instruct your students to design their own charts with coniferous on one side and deciduous on the other -- students will mark a tally each time they observe each type of tree during the field trip.
Unless you have a ready supply of many species of trees available to you on, or directly outside, school grounds, you will need to organize a field trip. Write and distribute permission slips, detailing the planned activities, the wooded area you will be visiting and the estimated times of departure and return for your trip. Ensure permission slips are taken home by students, signed by their parents or caregivers and returned to you prior to your departure. As you will only need to leave the classroom for a couple of hours, there is no need to make any provisions involving feeding students, but you will need to arrange for transportation.
Lead your young biologists out of the classroom and to the wooded area with their tree categorizing tally charts. Divide your class into groups of four and instruct them to stay with each other at all times. Have children draw pictures and photograph the different types of tree they see, study the leaves from trees, including looking at them closely through magnifying glasses, and mark a tally on their charts for each time they see evergreen and deciduous trees. Once you feel students have recorded enough of their observations, return to school.
You can use the drawings, photographs and tally charts students put together to decorate a classroom display board. Furthermore, pictorial aids, such as these will be useful to students who are preparing their own science fair project, as they can display them on their stall. Conclude the biology project on classification of trees once your classroom display board is decorated and ensure every student has at least one piece of their work displayed on the board.