National Environmental Education Week 2021

Posted on April 16, 2021May 7, 2021 by pltintern

National Environmental Education Week is the nation’s largest celebration of environmental education (or EE). This year, EE Week is April 19 – 23, 2021. It’s the perfect week to discover new environmental education resources and environmentally-focused activities to do with your students!

To celebrate #EEWeek, Project Learning Tree has partnered with the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) to share a suite of EE and STEM-focused resources. To kick off EE Week 2021, we’re offering free youth access codes for PLT’s Find Your Green Job Personality Quiz to introduce youth to careers in sustainability and conservation. By answering a few simple questions online, students learn what their dominant personality trait is and receive suggestions for green jobs that they might be best suited to. Try the quiz yourself before using a version of this tool with your students and get up to 300 student codes for free. Visit PLT’s Shop and enter the code EEWEEK at checkout. This 100% off discount will expire on April 30.

NEEF has also organized a variety of live webinars and recorded events for EE Week 2021. Use the following activities to engage your students in learning about nature every day of the week and inspire the next generation to appreciate and care for the environment.

Monday, April 19^th: Citizen Science (Community Science) Tools for Teachers

Citizen science, also known as community science, allows members of the public to contribute to large-scale collaborative projects alongside trained scientists. These projects help researchers collect larger datasets and they help improve scientific literacy outside the formal science community.

To start EE Week this year, NEEF is holding a live webinar on Monday, April 19^th at 2 PM EDT, Getting Your Citizen Science Project Off the Ground. This workshop will will walk participants through the process of creating, developing, and implementing an easy and accessible citizen science project.

If you don’t want to design a brand-new project, there are plenty of existing citizen science projects that your students can join through Zooniverse, SciStarter, or CitizenScience.gov. With a vast array of thousands of projects to choose from, your students are certain to find a project that suits their interests.

For example, FrogWatch USA, an initiative of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, is an amphibian-focused citizen science project that enlists and trains volunteers to recognize different frog and toad calls, while also teaching volunteers about local wetlands in their community. To introduce your students to the amazing diversity of life on Earth and how plants and animals are connected to one another, try these activities from PLT’s new Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide: Charting Biodiversity and Web of Life.

Another interesting citizen science project is Budburst, a project of the Chicago Botanic Garden. Using the Budburst App, participants can explore natural areas and detail information about local plant species. The information collected is then used to study plants and pollinators to understand how the environment is responding to climate change. This plant-focused citizen science project can be used alongside the Bursting Buds and The Closer You Look activities from PLT’s new Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide.

The Lost Ladybug Project by Cornell University is another citizen science project your students could participate in. They can go outside to look for ladybugs in their neighborhood, photograph them and upload their digital pictures to help researchers understand the movements and health of different species of ladybugs, including what habitats they can be found in. Try this citizen science project as part of a larger lesson with the Get Outside!, Did you Notice?, and Peppermint Beetle activities from PLT’s new Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide.

Tuesday, April 20^th: Greening STEM in the Field

The next two days of EE Week are focused on Greening STEM, a teaching framework that applies science, technology, engineering, and math (or STEM) to discussions about the natural environment. NEEF is offering a recorded event, Experience Nature from the Classroom (available starting April 19^th), that details how to use Chronolog.

Chronolog compiles images taken by citizen scientists to create a time-lapse of an environmental area, which allows for long-term ecological monitoring and storytelling. Use Chronolog with your students to explore a nearby outdoor environment and view the time-lapse to which their pictures are added.

Wednesday, April 21^st: Greening STEM for the Classroom

NEEF is offering a live webinar in partnership with the Forest Museum of Science, Greening in a Classroom Setting, on April 21^st at 1 PM EDT to highlight ways to add STEM into your teaching, for example, biodiversity resources adapted to virtual learning. For other ways to get started, NEEF has a Greening STEM Hub full of practical lessons in STEM that focus on real-world challenges within the natural environment.

PLT activities support STEM education by presenting real-world opportunities to apply science, technology, engineering, and math in problem-solving. Check out our STEM Strategies, a series of articles that provide lots of ideas for enriching activities found in PLT’s PreK-8 Environmental Education Activity Guide, such as:

Trees as Habitats: Students explore why snags make great habitats for birds, mammals, insects, fungi, amphibians, and reptiles.
Pollution Search: In this activity, students learn about five different types of pollution and ways to reduce our impact on the environment.
Picture This!: Students explore why some organisms live in many environments while others can only be found in very unique places.

Thursday, April 22^nd: Earth Day 2021

Since 1970, the global Earth Day movement has engaged more than 1 billion people to act and make collective changes to care for our environment.

The theme for this year is “Restore Our Earth”, focusing on using innovative methods and technology to help restore our planet’s ecosystems. Environmental restoration can take many forms, including the use of native plants (plants that exist in an environment naturally) to restore landscapes, provide habitat and food for native species, and support endangered wildlife. Check out PLT’s Educator Tips article Earth Day 2021 – Restore the Earth with Native Plants to explore the differences between native, non-native, and invasive plants; how invasive plants threaten the environment and why native plants sustain it — and bookmark a host of ideas to involve your students on Earth Day.

Looking for additional resources to help your students celebrate? EarthDay.org has an Earth Day Action Toolkit full of activity ideas and social media content to help make a difference on this special day and all other days of the year. NEEF also highlights the City Nature Challenge, a competition to engage the most people, make the most observations in nature, and find the most species in cities across America. City Nature Challenge 2021 takes place after EE Week from April 30 – May 9. Build on the momentum from EE Week and engage your students in this fun challenge and compete against students in other cities!

Friday, April 23^rd: Climate Change

Climate change may be the single biggest challenge that faces our planet today. It impacts many aspects of the daily lives of all living beings, including food and water availability, pollution, weather, and natural disasters. NASA’s Climate Kids is an excellent starting resource to allow your students to explore big-picture questions about climate, such as: what is the difference between climate and weather?

To wrap up National Environmental Education Week, NEEF will present two recorded events, How to Talk to Your Kids about Climate Change and Tips for Teaching Students about Climate Change (available starting April 19^th). Learn new ways to introduce this important and complex topic to your students and open a discussion about ways students can have a positive impact on the global climate.

PLT’s new Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide lists ten activities for students in grades 3-8 to explore aspects related to global climate change. This article Teaching About Climate Change lists some other PLT units for middle and high school students to explore both the scientific and the social aspects of climate change. Forests are one of our most important tools for fighting climate change and the 12 free activities included in PLT’s new Learn About Forests toolkit offer simple suggestions for leading learners ages 10–16 in themes related to sustainable forest management and stewardship, including:

Seeking Sustainability: This activity allows students to explore sustainable forestry and make connections to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Trees in Trouble: This activity allows students to assess trees for signs of unhealthy symptoms and learn about different causes of poor tree health.
Water Wonders: This activity allows students to model the different stages of the water cycle and explore how these stages are impacted by climate change.

Stay connected, virtually!

Throughout National Environmental Education Week, share your experiences and memories on social media using the hashtags #EEWeek and #ForEnviroEd and be sure to tag PLT – we would love to see how you are celebrating!

Facebook: @projectlearningtree

Twitter: @PLT

Cyberchase Workshop with PLT

Posted on April 14, 2021May 7, 2021 by Jackie Stallard

As part of Project Learning Tree’s partnership with WNET and PBS‘s Cyberchase, PLT hosted a joint FacebookLIVE event on Wednesday, April 7, 2021. The event’s “Explore the Outdoors” theme focused on PLT activity adaptations featured in Cyberchase’s Green It Up Activity Cards.

Watch the 20-minute WorkshopLIVE video below to learn about the many fun ways children and their families can take inspiration from nature to create a My Tree Journal. The demonstration uses new Journal pages from the PLT activity Adopt a Tree in PLT’s new Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide.

The event also featured a 3-minute video clip recorded last year by the late Virginia PLT State Coordinator and environmental education champion, Page Hutchinson. In this clip she demonstrates ways of observing and studying a specific tree throughout the year to hone students’ observational skills and understanding of trees.

Our Partners

Cyberchase is a STEM-focused animated show that encourages kids to learn about and appreciate the math and technology all around them. The series and supporting web games and activities encourage kids to see, think and do mathematics, and in addition to being tons of fun, the content has been carefully designed to support math education and reflect national curriculum standards. WNET is America’s flagship PBS station, bringing quality education programming to more than five million viewers each week, producing a wide range of acclaimed PBS series.

Janice Fuld, Outreach Producer for WNET, New York Public Media shared: “It was a pleasure to have Jaclyn as our special guest star. I really liked the way she conducted the demos in a very clear and engaging fashion! I think it really flowed nicely and I also thought Page’s video was a great addition to the session.”

View and share the 20-minute WorkshopLIVE event directly at: https://www.facebook.com/cyberchase/videos/784452188857225

PLT Releases New Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide

Posted on April 6, 2021June 4, 2021 by Vanessa Bullwinkle

Project Learning Tree® (PLT) released a new curriculum guide today to engage kindergarten through grade 8 students in exploring their environment. Fifty field-tested, hands-on activities integrate investigations of nature with science, math, English language arts, and social studies.

Educators can obtain a copy of PLT’s Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide directly from PLT’s Shop, from Amazon and other places where books are sold, or by attending a local PLT professional development workshop conducted by PLT’s 50-state network of 75 coordinators and 1,000 facilitators across the country.

Project Learning Tree is a long-established, award-winning environmental education program that uses trees and forests as windows on the world to advance environmental literacy, stewardship, and pathways to green careers. This new, cutting-edge resource for educators offers robust, real-world learning experiences for students designed to bolster STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning, promote civic engagement, and help young people acquire the skills they’ll need to be creative problem solvers. The activities develop students’ critical thinking skills as they participate in hands-on learning, debate real-life environmental decisions, and engage with their community in action projects.

“The guide is fresh, it’s user-friendly, and it works indoors and outdoors, in classrooms and nonformal settings, in urban, suburban, and rural settings” says Jaclyn Stallard, PLT’s Director of Curriculum. “Educators can easily integrate the activities into their existing curriculum or other programming to actively engage students in learning about both the natural world and the built environment. Every activity in the guide suggests ways to take student learning outside, which has only increased in importance to many parents and educators over the last year due to Covid-19.”

Hands-on classroom studies and outdoor field investigations

“For teachers that have challenges with moving out of the classroom, sometimes a gentle push is all someone needs and the ‘Take It Outside’ feature provides just that,” said Tony Napoletano, a public school teacher at Central Elementary School in Helena, MT, one of more than 40 educators who field-tested the activities with students. “The ‘I Love My Green Job’ highlights are also exciting. They show kids early on what careers they might want to pursue and just how many options there are in the green job field.”

PLT uses experiential learning, inquiry-based investigations, outdoor education, and service learning to help educators make learning relevant and fun for students. In addition, every activity includes career connections to further link learning to real-life experiences.

To ensure that PLT meets the needs of educators, hundreds of professional educators and technical experts help develop, review, field test, and evaluate all of PLT’s curriculum materials. The process includes research, surveys, writing workshops, and reviews with educators and natural resource professionals; revisions based on field testing; and formal assessment of impact on student learning by independent evaluators.

“There are a variety of ways to incorporate the activities into what I am already teaching,” said another pilot tester, Dr. Robin C. McLean, Agriscience teacher and Career and Technical Education at Northern Burlington County Regional Middle School in Columbus, NJ. “The strategies for differentiation and enrichment help to meet the diverse needs of my students and make the experience relevant for them.”

“I like how you list ideas for adapting activities to different age groups,” said Laura Bland, a state park naturalist with Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “This is important to me as I work with a variety of ages.”

PLT is committed to accessibility and this guide was developed through a critical lens of justice and inclusion. PLT’s model of professional development also helps to ensure that instruction and content strategies can be modified to meet the needs of all learners.

Engaging and Easy to Implement

Birds and Bugs. Web of Life. Forest in the City. These are three examples of the 50 activities found in the 432-page guide that is organized by grade level. Each activity provides educators all the information they need to plan, organize, and conduct the learning experience, as well as assessment and enrichment opportunities. Importantly for educators, each activity displays explicit connections to practices and concepts mandated by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts and Mathematics, and College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies (C3).

Another hallmark of PLT is professional development that offers educators the opportunity to participate in PLT activities, enhance their teaching skills, and become comfortable teaching outdoors. PLT’s 50-state network trains 15,000 PreK-12 educators every year through 800 workshops held across the country.

An online course option for educators to learn on their own schedule how best to use PLT’s new K-8 Activity Guide specific to their setting will be published later this year (August 2021).

“Exposure to nature has many proven benefits for physical and mental health and learning outdoors can enhance academic achievement,” says Jessica Kaknevicius, Vice President of Education for the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). PLT is an initiative of SFI.

“Furthermore, engaging students in exploring their environment provides important opportunities for youth to become engaged in real-world issues” she says. “From the earliest grades on up, they see the relevance of their classroom studies and acquire the skills needed for green careers in the 21st-century workplace.”

Making It Easy To Learn About Forests

Posted on February 12, 2021March 15, 2022 by Rachel Lang

As springtime approaches, the outdoors beckons as a place to learn, enjoy, and engage safely with others. International Day of Forests (March 21) is not coincidentally the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. This year’s theme is “Forests and sustainable production and consumption.”

Whether to mark that Day or any other day of the year, PLT’s new Learn About Forests provides what you need. Learn About Forests consists of 12 free, hands-on activities to use with kids ages 10 to 16. Whether using one, several, or all of the activities, non-educators have an easy-to-follow path to confidently teach about themes related to sustainable forest management, stewardship, and green careers. These are topics that many of today’s young people want to know more about.

How to Start?

It’s hard for people not used to teaching kids to know how to translate good intentions into effective, age-appropriate lessons. That’s where Learn About Forests comes in. Weyerhaeuser Company partnered with PLT and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative to develop Learn About Forests in part to better equip its own natural resource professionals with a way to connect with students.

“One of the first questions our employees have when they reach out to schools is how to start,” said Laura Six, Ph.D., a plant ecology scientist with Weyerhaeuser and member of the PLT Education Operating Committee. “They are not sure which concepts to focus on or how to structure a lesson for a group.”

Each Learn About Forests activity is designed to take 50 minutes to complete and consists of five steps:

Plan
Background
Prepare
Lead
Close

Simple procedures remove the mystery about how to engage learners with the topic.

A ‘Did You Know? Forest Fact’ and ‘Take Action’ suggestion are included as opportunities to extend the learning.

Tips and Tools for Working with Youth

If you’re new to working with youth, gain confidence from our supporting toolkit of tips and tricks, learn about collaborating with schools, and getting local support. Whether you draw from Learn About Forests or from other PLT resources, remember these basic, but essential tips and you’ll be a success:

Know your audience. The way you present these activities will change depending on the knowledge, skills, and prior experiences of your learners and even yourself! Play to everyone’s strengths as much as possible.
Adapt activities to your specific situation and comfort level. Don’t feel like you have to follow activity instructions to the letter.
Tell a captivating story. You might start each activity sharing a personal anecdote from your own experience.
Be brief. Limit your instructions to two or three steps.
Set boundaries. For outdoor activities, create and communicate clear physical boundaries that provide a safe environment.
If you have questions, ask! It’s okay to let youth know you don’t have all the answers, and it’s okay to ask for help—or search the internet for answers.
Model thinking skills. When the group discovers something unfamiliar, you might say, “I don’t know–let’s explore that together” or “What do you think is the best solution?
Silence is okay. Give youth adequate time to process information and respond.
Focus on the experience. Try not to get bogged down in the details by encouraging youth to make their own observations, ask questions, and draw conclusions.

Rundown of Learn About Forests

Review the set or focus on a specific activity to tackle first:

Every Tree for Itself: Explore how trees compete with each other for nutrients, sunlight, space and water
Living with Fire: Explore the burnability of different fuels and the role of fire in ecosystems
Make Your Own Paper: Experience magic in making an everyday product from a tree
Nature’s Skyscrapers: Calculate the height of a tree and width of its trunk with simple tools
Plant a Tree: Select the right type of tree for the site, plant it, and consider the many benefits of doing so
Seeking Sustainability: Go global by identifying connections between forests and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
Tree Cookies: Discover what a tree cross-section reveals about the past
Trees in Trouble: Assess how healthy (or not) is a nearby tree
Water Wonders: Model the paths of water molecules and their importance for all living things
Web of Life: Create an ecosystem to learn about the interconnectedness of organisms
What’s in a Label: Understand what certification is and why it matters
Who Works in This Forest: Learn about forest-related careers, maybe even one for your students’ future.

If you’re inspired to help grow the next generation of environmental stewards and future conservation leaders, be sure to try these activities that make it easy to teach youth about forests!

From Seeds to Trees—All in Your Pocket

Posted on December 7, 2020March 29, 2021 by Rachel Lang

Trees start small but pack a big wallop—and so does PLT’s new offering, Pocket Guide: Seeds to Trees. Through hands-on experiences, Seeds to Trees introduces nature to kids ages 3–6 by encouraging exploration and discovery through the lens of trees and forests.

At just 4 by 6 inches, the Guide is small enough, as the name suggests, to fit into a pocket or backpack. It’s a great stocking stuffer for educators, group leaders, parents, and grandparents to use with the children in their lives.

We recognized the need for an easy-to-tote resource when it’s hard to bring a larger book or computer outside. Thanks to funding from International Paper, we repurposed and redesigned some of our most popular early childhood PLT activities into Seeds to Trees.

What’s Inside the Pocket Guide

Based on solid PLT learning concepts, the Guide is set up so you can do all the activities or just one or a few, in convenient settings and with the materials you have at hand. We ensure that kids find the activities fun to do, while you can feel confident that are you are providing factual,
age-appropriate information.

Seeds to Trees also provides tested techniques to engage children in all kinds of hands-on learning opportunities, especially outside. So if you need to learn the basics or reinforce best practices, you’ll find a concise summary of tips. The laminated cover is rainproof and durable for regular use in the outdoors.

The Guide is laid out as follows: through a Dramatic Play and Read-Aloud, children start by imagining themselves growing from a seed to a tree in a way that engages all their senses. Four additional activities, each about 20 minutes, follow that work well with pre-K and kindergarten attention spans.

Shape Hike

This is like a game of “I Spy” with a mission. Children explore how natural objects, such as leaves, rocks, or acorns, have different shapes.

Nature Sounds

By listening carefully, a whole new world of sounds is revealed.

Tree Parts

Through their sense of touch, children explore different parts of a tree.

Trees in Our Lives

Children consider the many products from trees around them, from the places they live to toys to apples.

With the holidays in mind, the Pocket Guide is available now from PLT Shop for $12.99. Beginning in early 2021, it will also be available for purchase from Amazon and wherever books are sold.

PLT Featured on CNN: Outdoor Classrooms Reenergize Kids During the Pandemic

Posted on December 4, 2020January 22, 2021 by Vanessa Bullwinkle

We were thrilled to see PLT featured so prominently on CNN last month! Check out the article “Outdoor Classrooms Reenergize Kids During the Pandemic” and accompanying video published on CNN Health on November 18, 2020 that showcases how PLT is supporting educators and parents in a growing movement to get kids outdoors, not only during the pandemic which has forced schools to move to online learning, but also as a way for using nature and the outdoors for improving children’s health and social and emotional learning.

(CNN)—When the pandemic forced his school to go to online learning, fifth-grader Bergen Manzella spent six hours a day staring at his computer screen.

“My eyes were drooping a lot and red. I was really tired staring at a screen, not being able to move around that much,” said Bergen.

His mother, a math tutor, didn’t like what it was doing to him. The truth is, even before remote learning, she was seeing her son come home from school tired and wrung out.

“That more sterile environment in an indoor classroom can be fatiguing,” Brynn Manzella told CNN.

So she decided to homeschool him. Around that time, Manzella heard about another teacher holding an outdoor class once a week in her Loveland, Colorado, neighborhood with other elementary school kids.

The class came at the perfect time, said Manzella, because her son needed more outdoor time to explore and socialize with other kids in a safe way during the pandemic.

“I think it creates an opportunity for kids to be really resourceful and to think outside of the box.”

Fresh air, nature and no screens

Project Learning Tree is an environmental education program that gets children from prekindergarten through 12th grade out into nature to explore and learn about their environment — with a focus on trees. It’s part of the non-profit Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

“It’s super fun. We do a whole bunch of activities,” 10-year-old Bergen told CNN. “I just love all the colors of nature being outside.”

The program, offered in all 50 states, aligns with Common Core State Standards in science, social studies, language arts and math. Just in time for fall, they learn why leaves turn yellow.

Children sit in a circle during a Project Learning Tree outdoor classroom activity. — Children in Loveland, Colorado, circle around teacher Michele Mandeville during a Project Learning Tree outdoor classroom activity.

“The stuff inside them that makes them green, goes inside these tubes in the leaf so the tree can store it for the next year,” said Bergen. “Then the leaves turn yellow and fall off the tree.”

Students also learn about pollinators and how bees help produce the food we eat. They learn how seeds travel through the wind and grow in the soil where they land. They create nature journals — like so many scientists have from John Muir to John James Audubon.

The kids develop their creative writing skills that way — crafting stories from their observations, sitting under a tree for 10 or 15 minutes, said Michele Mandeville, a facilitator for Project Learning Tree in Colorado.

“If we give kids the opportunity to get outside to learn in nature, to engage with nature and others within an outdoor space, they’re really going to learn to preserve nature and just kind of fall in love with it,” Mandeville told CNN.

The kids choose a tree to “adopt” and they learn about that species; from the bark to the type of leaf, and watch how it changes through the seasons. They pretend to be trees and gather the nutrients they need for them to survive, collecting different colored squares for each element.

A student writes in her nature journal outdoors. — A student works on her nature journal, describing a yellow leaf from a tree she adopted.

“There was green for nutrients, yellow for sunlight, blue for water and red for fire,” said Bergen.

They learn to “read” a cross section of a tree to see how old it is through the number of rings and what happened in each year from beetle kill, to forest fires which Colorado is dealing with now.

Mandeville also teaches them to spot the species of birds in their trees — from downy woodpeckers to western bluebirds.

And classes are held all winter long in many places, unless it drops below freezing. Birds are easier to spot when the leaves are off the trees and kids learn to build shelters, and check for animal tracks.

Project Learning Tree shares these fun winter activities parents can do outside with their preschoolers.

Using five senses to observe

Children learn to focus and observe using their five senses just as scientists need to hone their power of observation. Mandeville has the kids map out sounds they hear, called “sound mapping.”

“They close their eyes and kind of put on little ‘deer ears’ by cupping their ears,” said Mandeville.

They write down everything from bird tweets to traffic sounds, to rustling leaves and rushing water and indicate the direction they’re coming from.

“We’re not engaged with sound because we’re so stimulated by our vision,” said Mandeville.

She encourages students to lift up a log in the river and discover what may be hiding underneath.

She explains how mushrooms and moss help decompose wood in the river.

“They can collect data and you can even spend time building bar graphs, comparing different elements in nature they found,” said Manzella. “You can’t do that in a classroom with four walls. They’re able to learn in a different way.”

The power of nature to soothe, and spark creativity

Bergen’s mom says after he takes the class, “he comes home enlivened.” Studies have found numerous health benefits of spending time outdoors in nature and children in particular benefit greatly.

Bergen explains it this way, “I feel like, you can breathe and you can just be closer to the ground, to this earth.”

Mandeville, who has a Masters of Education degree, took a year off from teaching in school to do outdoor education, which ended up coinciding with the pandemic.

Ten-year-old boy taking a core sample from a tree. — Ten-year-old Bergen Manzella learns how to take a core sample from a tree.

“There really has been a rise with students getting really nervous and anxious when they’re in the classroom and just kind of the rush in the quick change of subjects that they have to go through and not giving them a lot of time to process and get outside and really engage.”

Teachers need to get outside too.

“I know that they are burnt out and overwhelmed with trying to engage kids through a screen.”

Mandeville is a facilitator for Project Learning Tree, giving other teachers, and informal educators workshops — now online — about how to teach this outdoor education curriculum.

“Many students who are quiet in the classroom and don’t want to be called on tend to really excel outdoors,” said Mandeville who herself was a shy kid.

“The quiet ones… their eyes open up. They want to explore, they feel like they have a little more room to just go poke around and maybe lift a log look and see what’s under there.”

Kids tend to have very short attention spans when they’re looking at screens all day, said Mandeville.” It really is about going outside and just opening up our sense of awe and wonder and looking and seeing what we have not seen before.”

No formal class needed to get outdoors

A student looks at the rings of a tree through a microscope. The students learn how to tell a tree’s age and what happened in each year of its life.

Whether you are an educator, a parent, or a volunteer interested in the outdoors, you can find free nature activities and games for kids to download or pull up on an I-Pad on Project Learning Tree’s website. Or you can get training online to hold an informal class in your own community.

Parents can get their kids outside and away from their screens whether they find a class or not, said Mandeville.

“It’s just something very simple such as going into your backyard, finding a place to sit — we call that a ‘sit spot’ — and observing all that’s around them,” picking out bird song, traffic noise, leaf blowers and the sound that wind makes through the leaves.

That encourages self-awareness, to learn to sit quietly and just be.

“I find that nature has always been a place for me to heal and find hope in the world,” said Mandeville. Bergen’s mother agrees.

“Oftentimes we’re outside and we’re just not noticing all the life that’s happening around us even in the middle of a city.

And as soon as we start noticing, I really believe that we can’t stop noticing.”

View the story produced by Amy Chillag, Producer, CNN Special Projects Producer on CNN here.

PLT Launches Green Jobs Online Course

Posted on November 8, 2020February 11, 2021 by Ana Leirner

Green jobs are an excellent opportunity to match youth with meaningful careers. Green jobs provide a sense of purpose while making a positive global impact. Not only that, green jobs represent one of the fastest growing and changing segments in the global economy today and into the future.

With PLT’s new Green Jobs unit, you can play a role in introducing your learners to this bright future. From forester to wildlife manager, technician to remote sensing specialist, green jobs offer opportunities for people with diverse backgrounds, skills, interests, and personal qualities. Green Jobs: Exploring Forest Careers offers four hands-on, NGSS-aligned, instructional activities that help youth explore forest-related careers and get excited about green jobs.

Now, we’ve launched an enhancement to the unit: online professional development so you can best use and adapt the activities, while also giving you the option to earn Continuing Education Units or Continuing Forestry Education credits (including 1.50 Cat 1 credits from the Society of American Foresters.)

This online course was created in collaboration with and thanks to support from the Society of American Foresters.

We invite you to preview the Course Welcome for a glimpse of PLT’s newest on-demand Online Professional Development Course.

Much More Than Curriculum

According to the professional learning association Learning Forward,

Research has found that high-quality curricula have a significant impact on student achievement (Steiner, 2017; Chingos & Whitehurst, 2012). But a curriculum is not effective on its own. It requires teachers who understand it and use it with intentionality and professional judgment.[1]

That’s where PLT comes in. Since its inception more than 40 years ago, PLT has offered in-person professional development to accompany its curriculum through its vast and diverse network. In 2015, we launched online offerings to provide flexibility to educators who could not attend training in person. And now, during COVID-19, most PLT state programs offer blended virtual professional development that combines safe, flexible online learning with PLT’s hallmark personal experience.

PLT’s Green Jobs Online Professional Development Course provides the support to best use and adapt the activities, to explore green careers in the forest and conservation sectors with your learners, anytime and anywhere.

You will be able to–

Lead Green Jobs Guide activities, whether indoors, outdoors, or remotely
Apply tested tips and tricks when leading the activities
Modify activities to align with your learners and setting
Identify high-quality resources to supplement instruction

What’s Inside PLT’s Green Jobs Online Course

PLT’s Green Jobs Online Professional Development Course consists of 10 self-paced online modules, each lasting 5 to 15 minutes.

Curated videos will expand and deepen your knowledge of forest and conservation jobs.

You’ll also receive step-by-step guidance for leading the activities, as well as planning worksheets to easily plan and modify PLT activities for your learners and setting.

The course also contains:

Adaptations for Remote Teaching
- Lead selected activities in a virtual environment with our step-by-step guidance
Teaching Tips and Tricks
- Hear from seasoned facilitators and educators about teaching outdoors and modifying the activities for different learners
Connections to Academic Standards
- Learn how each activity supports three-dimensional science instruction, with a primary focus on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
Knowledge Checks
- Check your understanding and receive feedback through multiple-choice quizzes
Activity-At-A-Glance
- Print handouts for quick reference for leading the activities
Additional Resources
- Supplement the activities with curated resources from trustworthy sources

Green Jobs Online Professional Development Course is the first of a new generation of PLT online professional development courses. As with all PLT professional development, it follows best practices of adult learning, while providing the additional flexibility of an online course.

You can select specific modules to review at a time, or complete the entire course to receive a certificate of completion and be eligible for Continuing Education Units (CEU)* or Continuing Forestry Education (CFE) credits.

Ready to Get Started?

Check out the Course Welcome for more information and a glimpse of the course.
Purchase PLT’s Green Jobs Online Professional Development Course from shop.plt.org.
Find an in-person or blended Green Jobs professional development workshop offered in your state.

Learn More About PLT’s Green Jobs Resources

Don’t miss out on these resources that make it easy to expose young people to rewarding career paths that are in high demand!

Our Find Your Green Job online personality quiz is a great way to jump start a discussion with students
The Green Jobs: Exploring Forest Careers guide includes several activities to help them learn more about jobs in this sector
With our Green Jobs Online Professional Development course, you’ll learn how to modify the activities for different learners, get tips for adapting the activities for a virtual environment, earn Continuing Education Units or Continuing Forestry Education credits (including 1.50 Cat 1 credits from the Society of American Foresters), and more.

^[1] How Curriculum And Professional Learning Intersect. Learning Forward. February 2018

* Continuing Education Units offered varies by state. Please contact your PLT State Coordinator to learn more about your eligibility for CEU credits.

New PLT Activity Collections: Biodiversity Blitz for Grade 3-5

Posted on November 8, 2020August 14, 2023 by Jackie Stallard

Project Learning Tree is excited to launch a new series of theme-based activity collections that focus on specific grade levels and topics.

Biodiversity Blitz is the third collection of activities to be released as part of this new themed series for educators. It features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 3-5 that invite learners to investigate variability among species in an ecosystem, and how this variability – or biodiversity – helps sustain life on Earth.

The activity collection is available for purchase from PLT’s Shop as a downloadable PDF for $5.95.

PLT recently released Discover Your Urban Forest for grades 6-8 and Sensational Trees for grades K-2.

The Diversity of Life

One of Earth’s most valuable resources is its biodiversity, the variety of species that live here. Biodiversity is reflected in the wide range of ecosystems and species on Earth and in the genetic diversity within and among species. Biologists estimate that Earth’s current biodiversity is somewhere between 10 million and 1 trillion different species, living in a range of biological communities.

Biodiversity is one of the most important indicators of an ecosystem’s health. That is because biological richness means organisms have more options to get the food and other resources they need. And greater biodiversity means a greater ability to cope with change. Even if some species face food shortage, habitat loss, climate change, or other threats, the ecosystem as a whole is more likely to sustain itself.

Humans, like other organisms, depend on biodiversity to live. Diversity within and among species provides us with a variety of food, wood, fibers, energy, raw materials, chemicals, and medicines and contributes hundreds of billions of dollars yearly to the world economy.

Biodiversity Blitz: Grades 3-5 Activities

Biodiversity Blitz features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 3-5. Designed to be flexible, the activities can be used as individual, stand-alone lessons, or all together as a cohesive unit of instruction using a storyline technique.

1. Discover Diversity

Students imagine that they are visitors from outer space, viewing life on Earth for the first time. As they describe the life they find in a small plot, they will become more aware of the diversity of life.

2. Charting Biodiversity

Students explore different ways that organisms are adapted for survival. This activity helps students understand why there are so many different species on Earth.

3. Web of Life

By conducting research and modeling a food web, students learn how diverse organisms are connected in a forest or other ecosystem.

Learning Progressions

Storylines provide connectedness and continuity to individual activities and can serve as the instructional glue that holds areas of knowledge and skills together. The activities in Biodiversity Blitz may be linked together into a unit of instruction using a storyline technique, such as the one that follows.

Guiding Question: What is biodiversity and why is it important?

Storyline: Students investigate to find out ways that species are adapted for survival and how the biodiversity of species in an ecosystem contributes to its stability.

The sequence of individual activities supports this storyline:

Begin the unit with “Discover Diversity” to give students an opportunity to observe the diversity of life in a small plot of land. Encourage them to compare their data with others to help them determine what factors influence both abundance and diversity.
Use “Charting Biodiversity” to help students understand why there is such diversity in species on Earth. In the activity, students organize organisms according to their adaptations, and identify species that meet specific criteria. Challenge them to consider why there are so many different species and the value of biodiversity.
“Web of Life” involves students in researching different species to find out their specific needs for survival, and then using those species to model a food web. Through the model, students can see that the more diverse the ecosystem, the more stable it is.

New Features Within Each Activity

In addition to the typical elements that educators have come to rely on from PLT, the following new features in our theme-based series will further help educators adapt the activities for specific groups and settings.

Academic Standards

Classroom educators and nonformal educators alike need to ensure that instruction helps diverse learners meet rigorous academic benchmarks. Each PLT activity displays explicit connections to practices and concepts mandated by the following national academic standards.

Here is an example from “Discover Diversity”:

Take It Outside!

Describes how to extend student learning into the outdoors.

Differentiated Instruction Strategies

Cooperative Learning
ELA Skills
Hands-On Learning
Higher-Order Thinking
Multiple Solution Pathways
Nonlinguistic Representations
Personal Connections
Student Voice

Did You Know?

Forest Facts present interesting insights into forests as global solutions for environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

Career Corner

Introduces youth to forest-related careers.

Purchase Biodiversity Blitz now from PLT’s Shop for $5.95.

New PLT Activity Collections: Sensational Trees for Grades K-2

Posted on October 18, 2020December 4, 2020 by Jackie Stallard

Project Learning Tree is excited to launch a new series of theme-based activity collections that focus on specific grade levels and topics.

Sensational Trees is the second collection of activities to be released as part of this new themed series for educators. It features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades K-2 that invite young learners to investigate trees using their senses.

The activity collection is available for purchase from PLT’s Shop as a downloadable PDF for $5.95.

PLT recently released Discover Your Urban Forest for grades 6-8. Another theme-based activity collection will be coming soon for grades 3-5 focused on biodiversity.

Trees as a Sensory Experience

Exploring nature is a complete sensory experience. It is filled with countless shades of color, an array of sounds made by wind or wildlife, various scents from trees and plants, and much more.

Sensory experiences with the natural world excite children’s imaginations and foster their inborn curiosity and sense of wonder, which are important motivators for lifelong learning. Introducing environmental education in early schooling reaches children at a key developmental period in their lives. It has the potential to influence lifelong attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior toward the natural world.

Trees are an essential part of life on Earth. They give oxygen and help to clean water. They provide food and shelter for countless creatures. For human beings, trees provide shade for our picnics, fuel for our fires, wood for our furniture, inspiration for our creativity, and lots more.

Trees also provide a natural focal point for sensory explorations. Using their five senses, young learners can investigate trees – and learn about nature – through:

- Touching bark, seeds, and other natural objects
- Seeing shapes and colors
- Hearing birdcalls and nature sounds
- Smelling flowers and leaves

Sensational Trees: Grades K-2 Activities

Sensational Trees features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades K-2. Designed to be flexible, the activities can be used as individual, stand-alone lessons, or all together as a cohesive unit of instruction using a storyline technique.

1. The Closer You Look

Even though students may be very familiar with trees, they may not have thought much about the actual structure of a tree. In this activity, students go outdoors or view pictures to take a closer look at trees and their parts.

2. Peppermint Beetle

Students explore their sense of smell and discover why smell is important to animals, including beetles and humans.

3. Adopt a Tree

Students select individual trees to observe over time, deepening their awareness of tree changes and developing a greater appreciation for their local environment.

Learning Progressions

Storylines provide connectedness and continuity to individual activities and can serve as the instructional glue that holds areas of knowledge and skills together. The activities in Sensational Trees may be linked together into a unit of instruction using a storyline technique, such as the one that follows.

Guiding Question: What can we learn about trees using our senses?

Storyline: Students use their senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch to explore trees in their own community.

The sequence of individual activities supports this storyline:

Beginning with “The Closer You Look,” introduce the idea that each tree is individual and unique, and that we can use our sense of sight to learn more about a tree’s form and parts.
Use “Peppermint Beetle” to hone students’ sense of smell and to challenge them to differentiate various scents.
“Adopt a Tree” encourages students to conduct a variety of sensory investigations of a tree close to them. If possible, repeat the investigations over time so that they become increasingly adept at using their senses to collect data and also more familiar with “their” tree.