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Page updated August 18, 2010

Each year, Earth Day offers schools and students an apt occasion to learn more about our environment and reflect on their impact on it.  We’ve put together some resources to help educators and parents take advantage of this opportunity. We'll be posting more information frequently, so check back often!

General Information about Earth Day

• Environmental Protection Agency's Earth Day website offers a weath of information on how to protect the environment and your health Earth Day and every day,

Classroom Resources

Sites for students

• Arbor Day Foundation's Carly's Kids Corner has games and activities to teach kids about trees.
• WGBH's Meet The Greens is a site for kids about looking after the planet.  It includes lots of ideas about how to help out the environment, including composting, recycling (and making their own) wrapping paper, and many other projects.

• The Natural Resources Defense Council's The Green Squad is an interactive website that helps students learn about and take action for greener, healthier schools.  

• PBS Kids' EekoWorld (Environmental Education for Kids Online) features an engaging and interactive format that invites children to explore, experiment, and collaborate as they learn about conservation and the environment.  It also includes teacher and parent guides to help you use the site effectively.

• EPA's Climate Change For Kids Site helps kids learn about climate change using both written information and games.

• The National Library of Medicine's ToxMystery is an interactive site for kids 7-10 on potential environmental health hazards found in homes.

• EEK! Environmental Education for Kids is an interactive online magazine brought to you by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

• The National Audubon Society's Just for Kids Site is filled with activities about birds, other animals, and much more.

Information for teachers

• Sierra Club has Inner City Outings to help get urban youth (and their teachers) out into nature. (You can also check out their general education resources).

• The EPA has put together a collection of websites and documents on environmental topics including air (acid rain, ozone, and radon), conservation (energy, environmental stewardship, and natural resources), and water (drinking water, ecosystems, lakes, oceans, rivers, water pollution, and watersheds). These resources offer basic and clear information to assist you in teaching your students about the environment.

• The National Audubon Society's Educators Lounge provides tips, strategies, projects, activities, games, and resources to help teachers get their students interested in nature and conservation.

• National Geographic’s Earth Day Green-Guide includes a special report on climate change (including a photo gallery on Arctic climate change), videos on preserving the planet, and the environmental news of the week. (Check out their Environment page for additional information).

• Science News For Kids' articles on the environment are interesting, relevant, and kid-friendly.  Some even come with questions for students.  (Check out the homepage for articles on other science topics).

• Environmental Health Sciences' Environmental Health News keeps you up to date on what is happening in the environmental health community. 

Lesson Plans

Use an individual lesson plan or unit, or browse collections of lessons put together by others.

• The Cool School Challenge, Puget Sound Clean Air Agency Environmental science teacher Mike Town helped develop this educational program intended to engage students and teachers in practical strategies to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions schoolwide.

• Let’s Talk About It: Discussing the Science and Politics of Global Warming, The New York Times Learning Network
  In this lesson for middle and high schoolers, students hold a mock talk show on issues related to the science and politics of global warming.

• Tree Detectives, National Wildlife Federation (links to PDF)
  In this lesson for grades 3-6, students practice observation skills and identify trees on your school grounds (includes extensions for other grade levels).

• If Trees Could Talk: An Environmental History Curriculum, Forest History Society
  This 11-module, middle school curriculum gives teachers the opportunity to download social studies activities on the history of forests and their people.  The centerpiece of each module is a compilation of primary resources--documents, maps, newspaper articles, oral histories or photographs--from which students will be asked to gather, examine, and analyze information. 

• Be Water Wise! School Water Audit, National Environmental Education Foundation
  School water audits provide a fun and educational way for students to examine the ways that they use water everyday, and to encourage classmates, teachers, and school administrators to make their school more water-efficient and cost-effective.  This link includes the resources teachers need to lead students through such an audit, as well as supplementary lesson plans on water conservation from The Water Sourcebooks.

• The Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit for Formal and Informal Educators, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in partnership with seven other federal agencies
  This kit is for classroom teachers and informal educators in parks, refuges, forest lands, nature centers, zoos, aquariums, science centers, etc., to teach middle school students about how climate change is affecting our nation's wildlife and public lands and how everyone, even kids, can become “climate stewards”.

• It's Easy Being Green: Exploring Simple Ways to Dramatically Reduce Energy Usage, The New York Times Learning Network
  Students read about simple things people can do to make their homes more energy efficient and create posters advertising those ideas.

• Tread Lightly: Investigating Ways to Reduce Carbon Footprints, The New York Times Learning Network
  Students learn about the exchange of carbon credits to offset corporate emissions. They also investigate their own “carbon footprints” and reflect on how they can reduce their impact on the environment.

• Exploring Alternative Energy Sources, PBS’ NewsHour Extra
  Students read articles related to energy costs and consumption, use computation skills to determine the economic effects of rising energy costs on average households, and research and present on sources of alternative energy.

• Illinois Biodiversity Basics, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Chicago Wilderness, World Wildlife Fund
  This unit is designed to provide ideas for integrating biodiversity into your teaching. The activities are targeted to grades five through eight and Illinois-specific but easily adapted for use at other grade levels and environments as well.

• Persuasive Essay: Environmental Issues, NCTE's ReadWriteThink
  In this lesson, students explore environmental issues that are relevant to their own lives, then self-select topics, gather information, and write persuasive essays to convince others of the seriousness of their issue.  

• School Yard Geology, The U.S. Geological Survey
  This group of lessons (though each lesson can also stand alone) is designed to introduce teachers to the geologic features in their own schoolyards. 

• The Catalog Canceling Challenge (not exactly a lesson but an easy and important Earth Day project)
  Elementary school teacher Ted Wells came up with this project to help empower kids to make environmental change.

Collections of lesson plans

• National Geographic Xpeditions has lots of lesson plans on geography, including many relevant to environmental education.

• National Wildlife Fund's Schoolyard Habitats has some lesson plans available for elementary and early middle school students that are aligned to the National Science Education Standards and that help students explore habitats and wildlife without leaving the schoolyard.   

• U.S. Department of Energy links to more than 350 lesson plans and activities on green energy for grades K-12.

• Redefining Progress, in partnership with Earth Day Network, has developed single-day environmental education lesson plans for K-12 educators. The lesson plans are designed to integrate easily into science, social studies, math, and/or economics curricula.

• The Earth Day Network has lesson plans and activities on environmental topics ranging from climate to organics and food (and even includes a section on Thoreau).

• Discovery Education has put together a large collection of ecology lesson plans for students of all ages.

• Scholastic has put together a collection of Earth Day resources, including lesson and units plans (and ready to use SMART board lessons).

• Education World has created five new lesson plans for Earth Day 2010. (You can also browse the Education World Earth Day Archive, which has many more lesson ideas).

• Science Netlinks has put together a large collection of lesson plans that use internet resources to help students explore ecology and environmentalism.

• Pearson's Planet Diary has lots of activities related to various aspects of the environment (the Diary’s homepage also includes regularly-updated student-friendly environmental articles from all over the world)

Visionaries Speak about Earth Day and Environmental Education

Hear our exclusive interviews with leading educators and authors who are championing the cause of environmental education.

• Louisiana Supervisor of Administration John Swang talks about his district's comprehensive energy management program, which has saved the district over six million over the past four years.

• Award-Winning Environmental Science Teacher Mike Town talks about how environmental education can engage students.  He also talks about the Cool School Challenge, which has saved over 1.6 million pounds of CO2.

• Explorer/Environmentalist Jean-Michel Cousteau makes the case for better education about the oceans: "If you protect the ocean, you protect yourself."

• Adventurer/Filmmaker Jon Bowermaster explains why schools should pay attention to environmental problems in places as remote as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

• Award-Winning Principal Tamala Newsome describes her school's eco-friendly construction and its integral place in the low-income community it serves.

• Best-Selling Author Richard Louv argues that adults neglect of the outdoors has spawned "nature deficit disorder" in children and offers suggestions for getting young people outside.

• Environmental Science Teacher Gary Swick describes how he uses the outdoors to engage his students in both science and active environmental protection.

• Record-Breaking Polar Explorer Will Steger argues that the surprising pace of global climate change offers an unparalleled opportunity to motivate students on environmental science issues.

• West Philadelphia High School Teacher Simon Hauger describes a program that has inner-city high-schoolers outperforming MIT graduate students as builders of eco-friendly cars.

Groundbreaking Environmental Education Programs in Public Schools

Learn about innovative environmental education efforts in public schools across the country:

• In California, Santa Ynez Valley Union High School created an Environmental and Spatial Technologies class. This project-based service learning class uses technology to solve school and community environmental problems.

• Students at Crellin Elementary School in Maryland restored community land after discovering acid mine drainage seeping from a playground into a local stream.

• A groundbreaking career and technical education program at West Philadelphia High School in Pennsylvania has helped inner-city students build the world's first high-performance hybrid car. Those students beat college students and automakers in the prestigious Tour de Sol green car competition.

• Lawrence Barnes Elementary in Vermont is one of the first two urban schools to participate in Shelburne Farms' Sustainable Foods Project, a place-based learning initiative that engages students as spokespersons for sustainability efforts.