Classroom Resource Links for Teachers
The following links are additional resources to help you bring nature into the classroom or the classroom into nature. We are continually expanding this page. If you know of an environmental or science resource you would like to share with your fellow educators, please let us know!Other Pages: Teacher's Page | Teens Page | Field Trips to Placer Nature Center
Classroom Resource Links
Arbor Day Foundation
Offers free lesson plans, activities and downloads for all ages. Includes resources, contests and ideas of what to do inside and outside the classroom. You can get your classroom certified, learn tree identification and a place to share ideas of what kids are doing to make a difference in the world.
KidWind Project
A team of teachers, engineers, and scientists committed to innovative energy education to promote wind power through affordable tools and training programs that challenge, engage, and inspire students of all ages. The website offers lesson plans, science project ideas, and more. Visit the student section for an introduction to renewable energy and electricity basics. (resource for PreK-8’s “Renewable or Not,” “Energy Sleuths,” “Waste Watchers” and the Energy & Society Kit)
One Million Acts of Green
Record acts of green and share ideas to encourage others. Also includes an online calculator to show your positive impact. Cisco’s One Million Acts of Green website shows that individual, organizational, and community acts of green add up to something significant.The website offers educational resources on climate change, a green career guide, and more. (resource for PreK-8’s “The Global Climate,” “Energy Sleuths,” “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” “Plant a Tree” and more)
Project Budburst
Join thousands of others in gathering valuable environmental and climate change information from across the country. Engage your students, making careful observations of the phenophases, such as first leafing, first flower, and first fruit ripening of a diversity of local trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses. Get students outside! (resource for PreK-8’s “Bursting Buds,” “Signs of Fall,” “Looking at Leaves,” “Adopt a Tree,” “The Closer You Look,” “Have Seeds, Will Travel” and more)
Classroom Aquarium Education Program
AKA Trout in the Classroom, Salmonids in the Classroom, Steelhead in the Classroom, Salmon and Trout Education Program.
Through a classroom experience of hatching fish eggs and coordinated activities, students experience first-hand the value of aquatic environments, the balance that must be met to maintain and preserve California's fisheries and aquatic habitats, and how their personal actions affect these valuable resources. Read more : Richard Louv on the Classroom Aquarium Education Program (PDF) or Hatching Stewardship - an article about hatching fish in classrooms (PDF)
SMUD Helping teachers and students learn about energy
SMUD offers a variety of resources for K-12 educators and students, including printed materials, workshops, online games and activities for children.
EE Week's goal is to connect educators with environmental resources to promote K-12 students' understanding of the environment. EE Week offers hundreds of resources for educators -- lesson plans, videos, professional development opportunities and information on grants and awards -- on a variety of topics. All of the resources you will find on this site have gone through a rigorous review process to ensure they are correlated to learning standards, scientifically accurate, free of bias and appropriate for an audience of K-12 students and educators. Below are just a few of the many resources the web site has to offer:
Curricula Library EE Week's Curricula Library provides access to hundreds of standards-based lesson plans on a wide variety of topics, organized by grade level.
Nature Bee Quizzes Developed in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation, EE Week's Nature Bee Quizzes are short, grade-appropriate, multiple-choice online quizzes on the topics of nature and wildlife.
Nature Center Map EE Week's Nature Center Map allows users to search by zip code for local facilities which offer outdoor learning experiences for K-12 students.
Nature Deficit Disorder Survey This activity encourages students to think about their relationship to nature and how it differs from that of their parents. Students read an article and conduct an interview, reflecting on their outdoor activities.
Nature Journaling Blog EE Week's Nature Journaling Blog, written by Mark Baldwin of the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, provides tips and ideas for engaging students in observing nature.
Climate Change Resources Multiple tools including calculators and curricula.
The National Environmental Education Foundation's Health & Environment program has also developed this Fact Sheet on Children's Health and Nature , discussing the role of nature in combating childhood obesity, asthma, and other health concerns.
Semester of Service Strategy Guide - Youth Service America's new Semester of Service strategy guide helps educators engage young people in an extended service-learning framework of at least 70 hours and presents step-by-step instructions on how to identify and implement meaningful service and learning experiences.
Broadly focused, the guide offers useful examples on how to make authentic connections with science, language arts, civics and health. Filled with tested project examples, the guide also includes pages designed for student use. Download a free copy or view on the Web site.
Learn more.
Earth Gauge Kids - Earth Gauge Kids makes the connection between weather and the environment, and offers a quiz, activities, fun facts and tips and tools related to a monthly theme. This month's theme is lakes, and the website provides relevant information on many topics including watersheds, food chains, invasive species and pollution. Learn more.
Edutopia Summer Rejuvenation Guide - 10 Tips to Help You Relax, Reflect, and Recharge for the Coming School Year is packed with resources and ideas to help teachers maximize their summer vacation. The guide includes information on digital storytelling, joining a club for bookworms and much more. Learn more
Earth Day Network invites you to explore our award-winning Educators' Network! Here, you will find over 300 standard-based lessons, school greening tips, grants for teachers and more! Join our free Educators' Network for updates and information.
Earth Day Network was founded on the premise that all people, regardless of race, gender, income, or geography, have a moral right to a healthy, sustainable environment. Our mission is to broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide, and to mobilize it as the most effective vehicle for promoting a healthy, sustainable environment. We pursue our mission through a combination of education, public policy, and activism campaigns. Earth Day Network has a global reach with more than 20,000 partners and organizations in 190 countries.
Online Earth Day Ideas For Schools
- The Earth is an important part of everyone's lives, it is the place where all people eat, work, breathe and live. Without the earth there would be no people, thus it is crucial that people help take care of the Earth and its environment. Earth Day was first celebrated on April 22nd, 1970.
Gaylord Nelson was a United States Senator from Wisconsin who was concerned about the widespread degradation of the environment. Coming up with the idea following a horrible oil spill off the coast in 1969, he organized an "environmental teach-in" to spread the word about the importance of taking care of the planet. Earth Day has been celebrated each year ever since by millions of people in hundreds of countries around the world. In more recent times, Earth Day has been expanded by some communities to an entire "Earth Week."
This website has many, many activities and lots of information students can use year round. So much to do!
Seimens We can Change the World Challenge- The Seimens Foundation joined up with Discovery Education and the National Science Teachers Association (NTSA) to challenge students from K though 12 to encourage students to team up and develop plans to initiate environmental change in their local communities.
Over 15,000 students have participated in the Challenge since it began in 2008. Last year's grand prize winner, Team "Dead Weight" from West Branch, Iowa, exposed the dangers of lead wheel weights in vehicles and helped phase out this hazardous material in the tire industry. As the Challenge winners, they had the opportunity to present their project at the United Nations International Youth Day and meet with leaders at the Environmental Protection Agency and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. To learn more about the Challenge, which 25 state middle school teams were named the finalists for the 2009-2010 competition are, and find more evironmental resources including thier interactive classroom tools,
go to www.wecanchange.com.
NEA's Green Across America Groupsite. This site is a meeting place that provides educators interested in green schools and environmental education with a shared calendar, discussion forums, member profiles, photo gallery, file storage and more.
Classroom Earth - The National Environmental Education Foundation, in partnership with The Weather Channel, has launched Classroom Earth, a program designed to enhance and strengthen environmental education in high school classrooms nationwide. By harnessing the expertise and passion of teachers and students around the country, Classroom Earth will enrich the high school curriculum by encouraging the inclusion of environmental education into all high school subjects - from biology to art - and make it easier for teachers to access best practices online. The primary goal of the program is to increase the environmental literacy of high school students and to provide models for including environmental education in high school classrooms through the Web. For more information on teaching environmental education, visit their Teaching About the Environment page.
The National Gardening Association (NGA) - Founded in 1973, NGA is a nonprofit leader in plant-based education. We serve a national audience with timely materials designed to foster an appreciation for the benefits of gardening. NGA's child and teacher specific website, kidsgadening.org, provides information on gardening, classroom activities and projects, grants and awards, and other resources for encouraging children to make good food choices, augmenting classroom studies with experiential learning, building a love of nature, stimulating social interaction, facilitating cultural exchange, and more.
Water Education Foundation In the Classroom - The Foundation offers a variety of programs to teach students, our future voters and leaders, about water. Students in grades K-14 learn about the history, geography and science of water, and the difficult decisions surrounding this complex issue. All Foundation classroom materials are consistent with the standards of the California State Frameworks for Science and History/Social Science and are designed to correlate with grade-level teaching requirements.
The Foundation also serves as the California coordinator for Project WET (Water Education for Teachers), an international K-12 program designed for formal and non-formal educators.
Nourish Interactive - is a free one stop resource for fun nutrition games for kids, interactive nutrition tools and tips for parents and health educators to use to promote healthy living for the whole family.
Created by nutrition and health care professionals, Nourish Interactive's nutrition education website gives children and families the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy choices.
Early nutrition education is one of the best ways to help children learn about healthy choices and healthy eating. The Educators' Section has a list of lesson plans, activities, games and more to help you teach children about nutrition and healthy foods.
NASA's NES Teachers Corner - The NASA Explorer Schools website - called the NES Virtual Campus! This website is the portal through which you will access exciting NASA educational resources and content support throughout the school year. The NES Virtual Campus also connects your students to NASA scientists, engineers and researchers to learn first-hand about our mission of exploration and discovery.
This site is designed for teachers of students grades 4 through 12, providing authentic learning experiences inspired by NASA's unique missions. NES provides free teaching and learning resources that promote student engagement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM. It provides opportunities for teachers and students to participate in NASA's mission of research and discovery through inquiry-based experiences directly related to the work of NASA scientists and engineers. Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.
Yes! Magazine Online - reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, we outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world.
For Teachers
Document Actions: Bringing powerful ideas and practical actions to classrooms nationwide.
STEM Resources
TeachEngineering - The TeachEngineering digital library provides teacher-tested, standards-based engineering content for K-12 teachers to use in science and math classrooms. Their library is organized by subject areas, curricular units, lessons and activities.
Fuel Our Future Now - Developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and the X PRIZE Foundation, the Fuel Our Future Now Online Knowledge Center provides science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) interactive resources and teaching tools.
The site has additional related material, including a STEM Virtual Vehicle Design Lab, and other STEM-related exercises and lessons.
I-STEM Resource Network - Although developed for Indiana, the I-STEM Resource Network website can be used by teachers acroos the country as a resource which supports K-12 teachers and leaders working to implement high academic standards towards STEM literacy for all students. Their resources include lesson plans, curriculum units, professional development opportunities and more.
PBS Teachers STEM Education Resource Center - The PBS Teachers STEM Education Resource Center offers television and online content to help students explore new ideas and new worlds related to STEM. The site provides nearly 4,000 science, technology, engineering and math resources as well as access to STEM education news, video collections, professional development opportunities and additional STEM resource providers.
NSDL STEM Gateways and Resources - The STEM Gateways and Resources collection is comprised of web portals, websites and individual digital resources. The resources focus on ideas and practices in the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as the uses of technology in the classroom.
ECO-Math - Nature and math are clearly intertwined. It only should follow that environmental education should also include mathematics (and vice versa). This site provides information and ideas on how to combine mathematics along with studying natural sciences, ecology and sustainability. This Canadian site is loaded with activity ideas, contests, and free learning resources.
Science & Children: Clues to the Past - This journal article from the National Science Teachers Association offers an easy-to-do inquiry activity designed to engage students as they connect clues to solve the mystery of the decline of bald eagle populations in the 1960s in the lower 48 states. The activity is appropriate for elementary-level students. Learn more
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Activities
Growing up Wild
Growing Up WILD - 2nd Edition Now Available Our teachers who participate in our Discover Nature with young Children Workshop (First 5 program for teachers) get this book for free on their second class!! The classes are also free!
Growing Up WILD is the Council for Environmental Education’s new and much anticipated early childhood activity guide and training program for building school readiness skills through nature exploration.
Designed for educators of children ages 3-7, Growing Up WILD builds on children’s sense of wonder about nature through outdoor exploration. The 27 field-tested activities provide an early foundation for developing positive impressions about nature and lifelong social and academic skills.
Professor Sneeze Climate Change Stories for Children
The Professor Sneeze stories and educational materials were developed in the framework of a project of the International Polar Foundation. Stories for 5-12 year olds explain ways to save energy; 8-12 year olds learn how energy is produced by wind, sun, and water; and lessons are followed by a pedagogical note and craftwork to symbolically recreate sea ice.
Environmental IQ Quiz Updated and Online
The Environmental IQ Quiz developed at the University of Minnesota has been updated with new questions and the latest information. The online quiz is in an interactive format that provides instant feedback. Educators that are interested in using the quiz in their classrooms should contact Dovetail at 612-333-0430 or info@dovetailinc.org for a personalized online tool that will help track and report students' results.
Healthy Auburn Waters - Home and School Projects and Activities: Environmental and Water Awareness Games - The sites link to games for all ages and abilities. Each game focuses on an environmental theme (from animals to recycling). Parents may need to assist young children with reading. It is a good rule of thumb for parents and/or guardians to review these sites to determine appropriateness for your child. However, we have performed a preliminary screening of each site before listing them here.
Resources for homeschoolers