Tuesday
Nov012011

FUN IN THE CLASSROOM

(Got an educational resource you think we should include? Send your suggestion here)

A complete recycling curriculum guide from the Allied Waste unit of Republic Services intended especially for younger students. “Recycle Rosie” guides kids as they learn the 3 R’s – “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” Download the Recycle Rosie Education Curriculum (pdf).

A guide to understanding tropical rainforests and the people, plants and animals that call rainforests home. From Mongabay.com, this tropical rainforest guide also helps kids like you understand why rainforests are important, why they are disappearing, and how they can be saved. http://kids.mongabay.com/

From the National Environmental Education Foundation, “Classroom Earth” is an online guide for teachers who want to include environmental learning in their daily teaching. There are news stories, a resource library, and “success stories” about how other teachers have put environmental education on the daily meu of learning. http://www.classroomearth.org/

“Collective Learning” is a “garden based” learning program for students from kindergarten through high school. The basic goal of the various age-appropriate programs is to teach by showing students how to design and grow organic gardens. http://www.collectiveroots.org/whats-growing/garden-based-learning

From the California-based nonprofit group Zilowatt, an interactive set of learning tools for teaching energy conservation to kids in all grades. Zilowatt provides numerous online resources including videos, downloadable posters and fact sheets. Zilowatt’s stated goal: to help teachers and staff “creatively engage students and maximize those ‘ah-ha’ moments.” http://www.zilowatt.org/

From the National Energy Education Development project (NEED), this is a complete resource and curriculum guide for teaching students of every age the fundamentals of energy. Both “green” energy and fossil fuels are included. Teachers can pick and choose the information they need to conduct classroom experiments that bring the subject of energy to life. http://www.need.org/needpdf/Catalog.pdf

The nonprofit group Facing the Future of Seattle, WA offers a number of free downloads for students of all ages emphasizing global sustainability, climate change and conservation. http://www.facingthefuture.org/Curriculum/DownloadFreeCurriculum/tabid/114/Default.aspx

From Keep America Beautiful, the nonprofit education organization, this page of classroom activities includes games, a checklist of ideas for what kids can do to protect the environment, tips for preventing litter in your community, and more. http://www.kab.org/site/PageServer?pagename=kids_zone

“Clean” energy is a multi-faceted topic, but this guide will simplify things and instantly increase students’ understanding. For older students, this guide from Kachan & Co., a cleantech analysis firm, breaks clean energy into eight basic areas: renewable energy; energy storage; energy efficiency; transportation; air & environment; clean industry; water, and agriculture. As valuable for an adult as it is for a kid.
http://www.kachan.com/cleantech-taxonomy-definition-defined

The goal of Ireland’s Green Schools program is to make every student a participant in the greening of his school through activities in and out of the classroom. A complete rundown of what the program entails can be found at: http://www.greenschoolsireland.org/Index.aspx?Site_ID=1&Item_ID=28

From the Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education, this website has oodles of free online materials that will help students, teachers, school administrators, and parents understand and teach the basics of sustainability and energy. There are games and downloadable fact sheets on a wealth of subjects including the carbon cycle, renewable forms of energy, energy efficiency and more.   http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/wcee/keep/

This You Tube video especially for teachers provides a list of resources for teaching “Green Energy” in the classroom.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti3Mgv49dUA

From the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, everything you need to know about how to build a model solar car, plus  dates and places where students can compete against other schools. http://www.nrel.gov/education/jss_hfc.html

Duke University in the US has put together a “Green Book” for incoming students that provides a great guide for how to live “sustainably” in any community. Food, recycling, transportation and more are all explained in ways students of every age can benefit.
http://sustainability.duke.edu/action/greenbook/index.html

Looking for a green job? The US state of Mississippi has a “green jobs” website that should be one of the first places you check out. The site is a great primer on how many different kinds of green jobs there are and what you need to get one. Specifically for work in Mississippi, this site is good background for finding a green job wherever you live.
http://greenjobs.mdes.ms.gov/

 

From Lake County, Illinois comes a free online library of 17 videos grouped into water, recycling, energy conservation and strategic planning. Each is suitable for showing in a classroom or public library.
http://www.lakecountyil.gov/ABOUTOURCOUNTY/SUSTAIN/Pages/VideoLibrary.aspx

 

Especially for teachers, California’s “Education and Environment Initiative” gives schools interested in teaching environmental literacy a complete curriculum, plus an opportunity to interact with other educators. You just have to enter your name and where you teach.
http://www.calepa.ca.gov/education/eei/Curriculum/Default.htm

 

From Great Britain’s National Energy Foundation comes a comprehensive list of links on renewable energy and climate change suitable for students of an age. Find the BBC’s “climate change game,” the Danish Energy Agency’s “renewable energy activities” (in English), and much, much more. 
http://www.nef.org.uk/greenschool/energylinks.htm

Designed by an award-winning 2nd grade teacher in US state of Georgia, the “Worksheetless Classroom” provides lesson ideas and resources for improving student achievement while simultaneously reducing waste.  http://teacher.worksheetless.com/index.html

The Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative offers a slew of online resources to help teach general sustainability, energy, climate change, waste, water, biodiversity and more. http://www.environment.gov.au/education/aussi/educational-resources.html

From recycledevon.org in England comes a pair of short videos that make it easy to understand the process of aluminum and glass recycling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plp7HYXCpZA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8YObQbE88&feature=related&noredirect=1

Now that Maryland has become first US state to require high school graduates to be environmentally literate, here is the state’s proposed “environmental literacy curriculum” 
 http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/programs/environment/tk/els

From Second Nature, a non-profit dedicated to sustainable building, comes a curriculum designed to teach sustainable building concepts to all students. http://www.campusgreenbuilder.org/CurriculumChapters