Pre-K-8 Environmental Education Activity Guide

Education Connections
The guide is designed to meet the common components of national education reform by using the constructivist approach to learning, whole language teaching, cooperative learning, problem solving, and authentic assessments.

In many states, the PreK-8 guide and the secondary modules have been correlated to state learning standards. At the national level, the curriculum has been correlated to the National Science Standards, National Social Studies Standards, Excellence in EE Guidelines, and Girl Scout (badge) program activities.

Before making it widely available, PLT commissioned a formal evaluation of the curriculum and materials. The results of the evaluation confirmed that PLT is effective in helping students become more environmentally literate citizens.

What's Inside the Guide
The activities are organized into five main themes-diversity, interrelationships, systems, structure and scale, and patterns of change.

The guide is designed so you can use a single activity or many over the course of a quarter or school year. Each activity includes background content, a teachers' step-by-step guide, and gives need-to-know information on:

• Grade level recommendations
• Incorporating subjects, such as math or language arts
• Concepts, skills, and curriculum objectives
• Needed materials, many of which are easy to obtain, free or low-cost
• Timeline - how long it will take to prepare and conduct the activity.

Each activity also provides:

• references and extensions for those who want to delve deeper,
• reproducible student pages (also available in Spanish),
• related activities, and
• assessment opportunities for students.

Click here to sample the PLT activity, Environmental Exchange Box.

Click here to preview a PreK-8 Guide activity web enhancement. This example is part of the technonlogy partnership between Project Learning Tree and the University of Houston - Clear Lake PT3 program. Stay tuned for more links and resources.