Curated OER
Save Our Soil
Students read about the history of soil and complete language arts, math, social studies, and more activities about soil. In this soil lesson plan, students complete fraction problems, create a school compost pile, write about conserving...
Curated OER
What's Hiding in Your Home Cabinets?
Students analyze a variety of products found in their own homes to determine their toxic content. They identify words such as caution, warning or danger and relate them to their relative toxicity levels.
Odell Education
Plant and Animal Cells
Incorporate multiple facets of the cell into your next high school lab! Through an introduction to cell organelles, class members observe each cell type and draw visuals to further demonstrate understanding of cellular processes in both...
Curated OER
Texas Recycles Day: A Sample School-Wide Environmental Event
Students participate in a recycles day. They research how recycling benefits the environment. They also compete in a paper products recycling contest.
National Park Service
Reduce Our Carbon Footprint, Let’s Compost!
Roll up your sleeves and get a little dirty with this elementary and middle school compost lesson plan. All you need is a large plastic container, a couple old newspapers, some organic waste, and a few hundred worms and you're ready...
Curated OER
Paper Recycling Program
Students design a campaign to encourage paper recycling at the school. In this recycling lesson, students try to persuade other students and staff members to adopt a new recycling program. Students work together in groups to come up...
Curated OER
Recycled Paper
Sixth graders keep track of the amount of paper they consume on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. The goal of the lesson is to have them all find ways to reduce the amount they use. Everyone creates recycled paper from old newspapers...
Curated OER
Scavenger Hunt Worksheet
Exactly how environmentally friendly is your school? From the air fresheners in the bathrooms to the cleaning solvents used in the classrooms, young conservationists search the school grounds for sources of air pollution in...
Beyond Benign
Water Bottle Unit
How much plastic do manufacturers use to create water bottles each year? The class explores the number of water bottles used throughout the years to determine how many consumers will use in the future. Class members compare different...
Curated OER
NECESSARY WRAPPERS?
Students bring in a packaged item to unwrap. They weigh the pile of packaging and pile of product and determine which weighs more. They identify the source of raw materials for packaging and discuss ways to reduce packaging and overall...
Curated OER
Elmer's Glue Crew
Students practice cleaning up the environment by identifying wasteful behaviors in their school. In this arts and crafts instructional activity, students create "eco-inspector" binoculars using Elmer's glue, plastic wrap, and...
Curated OER
Waste Not, Want Not – Recycling
In this recycling worksheet, 5th graders read a selection about recycling, renewable, and non-renewable resources. They answer 6 questions based on the reading by defining words, separating trash into renewable and non-renewable...
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Biomass: Biogas Generator
It's a gas. Middle schoolers build a biogas generator following the directions in this resource. After a few days of observation, they demonstrate that the gas given off by the decomposing manure is flammable. The activity concludes as...
Curated OER
How Do Our Attitudes Affect Waste?
Students take a survey to assess typical purchasing practices, to determine the influence of packaging on consumer choices. They also determine whether consumers consider waste disposal and recycling when making purchasing decisions.
Curated OER
Recycling Garden Waste
Pupils experience how to make compost. This lesson is ongoing with periodic checks and maintenance. They select a piece of ground around the school or around their homes to establish a compost pile. Organic materials are utilized within...
Cal Recycle
Conserving Natural Resources
Trying to plan an engaging elementary science unit on natural resources? Conserve your energy! This five-part series of lessons and hands-on activities has exactly what you need to teach young scholars about the importance of conservation.
Curated OER
Recycling-Taking it Easy on the Environment
Students review the garbage/landfill graphs included with the lesson plan. They discuss the information on the graphs and discuss which garbage products come from their homes. Students collect examples of over packaging to share with...
Curated OER
Protecting the Environment
Middle schoolers explain what biodegradable materials are and list examples of them. They design, with online partners' feedback and input, a product made of biodegradable materials and develop a marketing campaign to best sell their...
Curated OER
Recycling: Problem solved or problem ongoing?
Students research on the Web, magazines, and newspapers the extent of waste and recycling situation has been solved. They focus on the community, get facts and figures to show how recycling goes on there.
Curated OER
Bird Seed Mining
Young scholars search through the seed mixture and separate out our "mine" beads, sunflower seeds, and other grain products, making piles of each. students count up the number of gold, silver, and blue beads, and sunflower seeds from...
Curated OER
ENERGY USE ADDS UP!
Learners investigate the amount of power used in your home and what appliances use the most. They analyze the concept that producing energy costs us money, affects our environment and produces waste products. Students come up with three...
Curated OER
Local Environmental Issues: Pollution
Third graders discuss the ways in which human interaction with the environment and production of waste products contribute to pollution. Through a pollution demonstration, they explain how various groups of plants and animals can be...
Curated OER
How Good Is Green?
Students explore the amount of electricity used and wasted in homes and at school using kilowatt meters. In this environmental energy lesson, students compute power usage by appliances over time and identify ways in which electricity is...
Curated OER
Reduce, Re-use, Recycle
Learners determine the importance of recycling to reduce waste, to employ trash in useful ways, and to save the environment. They estimate the percentages of landfill waste that items constitute, based on what they found in their own...