Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide

“An important and engaging tool for teachers.” – Kirkus Reviews

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Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide includes 50 hands-on, multidisciplinary activities to connect children to nature and increase young people’s awareness and knowledge about their environment. Activities integrate teaching about the environment into a multitude of subjects using hands-on classroom studies and outdoor field investigations. The guide is user-friendly, and works in classrooms and nonformal settings, in urban, suburban, and rural areas.

Activities are organized by grade level (K-2, 3-5, and 6-8) and align with national standards for science, English language arts, math, and social studies. Many activities offer variations for a different grade level or focus. While lessons can be conducted both indoors and outdoors, all suggest meaningful ways to take student learning outside.

Teachers, nonformal educators, and natural resource professionals can easily integrate the activities into existing curriculum or nonformal education programs. Activities include step-by-step instructions, time and material requirements, and corresponding student worksheets with green career connections. Many activities are particularly suited to urban environments and STEM learning as well as some longer-term studies.

Overview

This supplementary curriculum is multidisciplinary, with an emphasis on science, reading, writing, mathematics, and social studies. It is designed to develop students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The activities are inquiry-based and present students with real-world opportunities to apply STEM.

• Activities are organized into color-coded grade bands: K–2, 3–5, and 6–8. Some have variations to adjust for older or younger students.
• Most activities are designed to take one or two 50-minute periods of instruction.
• Activities connect students to nature and the outdoors. Several are particularly suited to exploring urban environments.
• Each activity contains all the information needed to teach the core lesson, including background information; step-by-step instructions and safety tips; time and material requirements; student pages; assessment suggestions; and ways to enrich or extend the activity.
• Topics include forests, wildlife, water, air, energy, waste, climate change, invasive species, community planning, and more.

Features

The following activity features will help you adapt the activities for your particular group and setting:

• Take It Outside!- A way to do all or part of the activity outdoors.
• Differentiated Instruction- Solid strategies to adapt the activity for different learners with differing abilities.
• Did You Know? Forest Fact- Interesting insights into how forests contribute to environmental, economic, and social sustainability.
• Career Corner- Inspiration from the earliest grades on up about career paths suggested by the activity, many of which are “green jobs.”
• Academic Standards Connections- Each activity clearly indicates explicit connections to at least one (and usually more) sets of content benchmarks for Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS.ELA) and Mathematics (CCSS.MATH), and College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies (C3).

Project Learning Tree® (PLT) is a long-established, award-winning environmental education program that advances environmental literacy, stewardship and pathways to green careers using trees and forests as windows on the world. Through interactive and engaging activities, suitable for all ages and settings, PLT builds understanding and appreciation of the natural world and supports getting youth into nature in ways that are meaningful. PLT is designed to help young people learn how to think not what to think about complex and pressing environmental and sustainability issues. PLT also offers high-quality professional development to help teachers integrate teaching about the environment into their lesson plans and become comfortable teaching outdoors.