Scholastic and Dirtmeister's science reporters bring us a unit investigating how animals develop certain traits and behaviors over time due to their environment.
Three lessons include: "Millions of Bugs", "A Bug's Life", and "Bug-Catcher's Safari" brought to you by the Young Entomologist Society. Each includes interesting facts all students should become familiar with as well as projects and activities to involve them in the learning process. Discussion questions and assessment ideas are included in the lessons.
Provides links for teachers, students, parents, K-12 educational materials, lesson plans, and professional development opportunities.
This is a project designed to help students learn to observe, collect and analyze data, and come to conclusions about birds in their local area.
Explore animals of various kinds and see how they adapt to the desert environment.
Ecosystems: Lesson Plans and Student Resources
A wealth of teacher and student classroom resources from the Kentucky Department of Education.
Environmental Education Lesson Plan Links
The Science Spot offers these lesson activities correlated with the Illinois State Standards.
Environment lesson plans for Earth Day
Trees, environment, Earth Day, composting, pollution, recycling, etc.
Environmental Unit for 4th Grade
This unit focuses on prevention, reduction and reuse. Learning activities are described for identifying environmental concepts, needs vs. wants, and looking at school and classroom waste. Also includes a waste management mini unit.
Oceanlink challenges students in this activity encouraging them to draw a food web from given marine creatures.
A guide for teaching about coastal wetlands from USGS Biological Resources.
Using the book by Lynne Cherry, this lesson includes a fun multi-age activity to investigate interdependence in a rainforest ecosystem.
An online ecological lesson appears at this site from the Thorne Ecological Institute. Check out the information on timberlines.
A unit designed to teach students about littering and ways to reduce the problem.
Take a virtual tour through the rainforest geosystems and ecosystems. Included are lesson plans with a teacher's guide and assessment information.
Natural Resources, the Environment, and Ecosystems
From the University of Illinois' Urban Programs Resource Network come 6 lessons with teacher guides complete with background materials, projects, and activities.
Neighborhoods: Ecosystems, Biomes, and Habitats
Franklin Institute Online presents a variety of classroom ideas exploring various environments.
New World Publication's Marine Life Learning Center
A fine collection of actual photographs and lesson plans of fish and reef inhabitants.
Interdisciplinary Marine Science activities from the Smithsonian Institution. Includes six lesson plans on plants and animals that live in different ecosystems.
Project Wet's Incredible Journey
Students discover how water moves through the water cycle in this centers-based activity using large hand-labeled dice.
Teacher guides are available online including: Animals Abound, Diversity of Life, Flight for Survival, Ocean Olympians, Ocean Friends, Orcas, Seals, Sea Lions and Walruses, Saving our Seas, Seaworld Physics, Whales, and Water.
Teacher Resource Kit: Ozone Action!
Ozone Action! provides a downloadable teacher resource kit for different grade levels.
Extensive lesson plans with lots of additional resources to explore all about marshes, swamps, and bogs.
This classroom activity demonstrates how all living things are interconnected.
This lesson unit looks at ocean ecosystems and includes many links for ocean investigations.
Primarily informative, this site gives some facts you may wish to use in creating a lesson on the world's rainforests.
New England EPA Teacher Resource Center presents a number of projects and activities for teaching about the Wetland ecosystem.
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