Earth Day Lesson Plans

(Earth Day Lesson Plans)

Happy Earth Week!!!!

I am super excited for Earth Day as I am very passionate about Eco-Friendly living (can you tell I live in the Pacific Northwest). In gearing up for Earth Day, I recently did a mini Environmental Health unit with my students.

Now, to celebrate Earth Day and to inspire teachers across the nation to talk about taking ownership of our planet.

Here's a little preview:

As I said, I did these activities with my students a few weeks ago. I was impressed with how well they did, especially since I have started making digital literacy a huge aspect of their work in Health. One of the biggest shocks of teaching this year has been my students' complete lack of digital literacy. So in an effort to empower digital skills, I have started adding links to instructional videos, articles, infographics, and teaching clips on each worksheet.

No longer do I stand at the front of the class and go over the instructions - instead students pull out their phones and tablets (yes, Mrs. Kay is cool like that:) or grab a Chromebook (I also email all of the necessary links), watch the instructions and be on their way. Here's the teaching video I made for Environmental Health:

I am always looking for ways to challenge students to take control of their learning and YouTube has definitely helped me meet this goal! YouTube to be an awesome teaching tool because it lets you: slow down the video, add subtitles, add translated subtitles, pause, rewind, etc. Due to all of these cool features, I've found that when using videos students cannot hide behind anyone else's understanding and they only succeed if they take ownership of their learning. I also encourage as much googling as possible!

In this day and age, there is no reason anyone should ask a question without searching for the answer - and it is frightening how many questions get asked in my classroom by students who didn't even think to Google it!

Before I sign off, Let me leave you with a few quick shots of the Environmental Health Worksheets I used with my students. Just like the Career Exploration Packet, I created three levels of worksheets for my 6th-8th students with each worksheet building on the previous one.

Level One: What is Environmental Health?

Level Two: Understanding Environmentally Healthy Habits

Level Three: The Flint Water Crisis

Again, please head over to my TPT and grab this packet! Please, please, please use these Earth Day Lesson plans to encourage students to take control of our planet, so we can continue living here for many years to come!