Curated OER
Landscape Garden Makeover
A project-based learning plan focuses on landscapes in the community. After identifying problems, such as dead trees or misplaced automatic sprinklers, learners design solutions, contact local organizations to fix the problems, and do...
Rainforest Alliance
Who Takes Care of the Maya Forest Corridor?
Who keeps animals safe? Who keeps us safe? Discover the helpers that make learning and growing possible through a medley of activities that focus on habitats—ours and those in the rainforest. Scholars are asked to identify one...
Curated OER
Rain Garden
Learners build rain gardens. In this community service lesson plan, students study the effectiveness of rain gardens in allowing water to run off. Learners build a community rain garden at their school.
Curated OER
Presentation to Class and School
How's the weather today? Elementary and middle schoolers plan severe weather awareness day in this lesson on research presentations. They present their research reports, along with their action plan and any other associated products...
Curated OER
How Can Clear of Tress Destroy a Community?
Fifth graders brainstorm the relationship between trees and humans to determine how humans benefit from trees and how they benefit from us. They discuss oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange, soil stablization, animal habitat, shade, medicine...
Curated OER
Amazon Rainforest Poster Project/Service Project
Students make efforts to save the rainforests. In this environmental stewardship instructional activity, students discuss facts about the resources of the rainforests. Students then create posters that encourage other to reduce their use...
Curated OER
Design a Service Learning Activity
Students work together to design a service learning activity for their community that would benefit the Tijuana estuary. Using the internet, they research the elements of a service learning project and plan their's accordingly. They...
Curated OER
Phil's Garden of Good
Students read "The Rainbow Fish" and discuss how the fish benefited by giving others. In this sharing lesson, students prepare plants and letters for senior citizens. Students present their letters and plants at a visit to a senior...
University of Wisconsin
Getting the Word Out
An appropriate way to celebrate and conclude the construction of a rain garden is to share it with the community. Small groups collaborate to design an outreach product such as a PowerPoint presentation, brochure, or poster, to draw...
Curated OER
Essential Services
Students discuss necessary community services then complete a worksheet by filling in essential services, the needed inputs and outputs produced by fulfilling the service.
Curated OER
Aluminum Can Drive
Second graders complete a recycling project to clean-up their school. For this service project lesson, 2nd graders assess their campus for litter, set up a recycling project, clean up their campus, and recycle the trash. Students also...
Curated OER
Collective Compromise
Learners explore the concept of philanthropy. In this service learning lesson, students examine what to do with waste as they plan and implement a strategy for controlling their school's trash.
Curated OER
The Magic School Bus Holiday Special
Students learn along with Ms. Frizzle's class. In this Magic School Bus lesson plan, students learn the importance of recycling as they explore how things can be reused or recycled again and again.
Curated OER
School-Wide Recycling
Learners investigate recycling. In this environmental instructional activity, students design a recycling program for their school. Learners collect data about how much recyclable materials they use in one week. Students also survey...
Curated OER
Planting Phil's Garden
Learners explore gardening. In this agriculture instructional activity, students plan and plant seeds according to the procedure modeled by a "master gardener." Flowers are distributed at a local retirement home.
Curated OER
Xeriscaping In Your Community
Fourth graders participate in a service-learning project. They design landscaping that maximizes water use and utilizes indigenous plant species. Afterward, they advertise and present their xeriscape garden at a school function such as...
Berkshire Museum
Meet a Naturalist: Researching, Writing, Interviewing
Young scholars reach out into the community and learn about different environmental science careers in this inquiry-based instructional activity. Beginning with a short research assignment, children gain background knowledge about...
Curated OER
Research Projects in Renewable Energy for High School Students
Thirty-eight pages of information prepares you to assign middle or high schoolers a project on sustainable energy. They take a pretest, review the scientific method, conduct background research, and finally choose an experiment to carry...
Curated OER
Hazardous Chemicals? Not in my Water!
Students reflect on the effects of their actions on the environment. In this community service lesson, students investigate the hazardous quality of products within their homes. Student educate their families and communities about the...
PBS
Stories of Painkiller Addiction: Learning About Opioids
Feeling high is not the only side effect of abusing prescription opioids. Middle and high schoolers learn more about specific painkillers, including Fentanyl, Oxycodone, and Clonazepam, as well as their common brand names and extensive...
Curated OER
Energy Jeopardy
While science Jeopardy games are a dime-a-dozen, this one has some pretty unique categories that are still relevant to a middle school physical science curriculum. The topics include: leading nations, famous Americans (who invented...
Curated OER
Investigative Case - "Rio Grande Wildlife Refuge"
Learners study wildlife management as it relates to ecological principles and whole systems. They role play professional ecologists working for the fish and wildlife service to develop a plan to manage a new wildlife refuge along the Rio...
Curated OER
Traverse City Trouble Makers
Students investigate how to become advocates in an authentic environmental issue, in this case the invasion of the zebra mussel invasion of the Great Lakes. They complete graphic organizers during Internet research, while reading...
Curated OER
Evergreen's Green Team Energy Audit
Students investigate the ways energy is used at their school and how it can be changed. In this energy lesson, students participate in a service project related to energy. Students record and calculate changes that saved energy and...