Linking to Learning
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Mar 5, 2009 5:34 PM
Americans strongly support providing environmental education in schools and the National Environmental Education Foundation has taken up the challenge by building environmental education resource guides for teachers at classroomearth.org and eeweek.org. These sites were designed to strengthen environmental education across the curriculum and provide lesson plans, multimedia and other resources to help teachers prepare students to meet the environmental challenges that face the global community.
NEEF was chartered by Congress in 1990 to advance environmental knowledge and action, as well as to activate environmentally responsible behavior in the general public. Classroom Earth was established to promote environmental literacy for school children. Major funding for the Classroom Earth site was provided by the Weather Channel and it was developed by harnessing the expertise of committed educators to help define the scope and content of the resources.
The site is geared to secondary educators and offers interdisciplinary classroom resources that are not limited to the science or social studies classroom. If the site is used in conjunction with the resources on NEEF’s National Environmental Education Week initiative then you can span the K-12 curricula in almost every subject area.
The well-organized home page classroomearth.org features glimpses at newsworthy items, but easily leads you to resources, grants, professional development and testimonials from teachers.
When you click on the resource tab near the top of the page, you notice that resources are categorized by school subject and by topic. If you are looking for something more specific you can also search by keyword.
While it has been traditional to teach about the environment in the science classroom, the search tool also points to lesson resources in foreign language, language arts, mathematics, social studies and the arts.
The foreign language resource is limited to one Spanish language Web site — somosamigosdelatierra.org — but it is a destination rich with vocabulary, cartoons, music and a host of activities that emphasize the global nature of environmental issues. You’ll find articles concerning the Area de Libre Comercio de las Américas and other Spanish-language information about ecology.
The language arts resources contain lesson plans and activities like analyzing and reporting on the impact of epidemics on world population and creating a brochure on alternative energy resources like photovoltaic cells. The lesson plans are excellent examples of an interdisciplinary approach to environmental studies.
In mathematics we find very sophisticated lessons like “Meadows or Malls: Using Matrices to Make Decisions,” and others that are less complicated like analyzing tree rings where students become dendrochronologists. The math lesson plans also include energy audits and exercises that help explain how to determine population through random sampling.
If you teach younger children, don’t be daunted by the sophistication of the secondary level lessons on Classroom Earth. NEEF also created a site to meet the educational needs of younger children as part of its effort to promote National Environmental Education Week. On the home page, you can click on Curricula Library under Teaching Resources on the left-hand navigation. There you will find an archive of grade-appropriate lessons on topics ranging from air quality to water. Under Other Resources you will find a Carbon Footprint Calculator and a student survey to determine whether they suffer from Nature Deficit Disorder.
This year’s Environmental Education Week theme is “Be Water Wise,” and will feature resources about analyzing, conserving and protecting water resources. There are grade-appropriate lessons for teachers across the K-12 spectrum including lessons about leaky landfills and the controversies about who owns water rights.
Now, at a time when schools are strapped for cash, you will be interested to know that many organizations offer grants to promote environmental education. For instance, in March, the Captain Planet Foundation offers grants ranging from $250 to $2,500 for school projects that promote understanding of environmental issues. Many other grant opportunities are listed under Funding Resources on the EEWeek site, or by clicking on the Grant tab near the top of the page of the Classroom Earth site.
NEEF has done a good job in aggregating these resources and has made a lot of progress in promoting our national environmental literacy. By using these sites, you may learn as much as your students.
