Earth Month
Earth Month
Celebrate Earth Month in and outside of the classroom with these relevant and popular resources from Social Education, Middle Level Learning, and Social Studies and the Young Learner.
Social Education
Earth Day at 50: A Time to Engage
The 50th anniversary of Earth Day offers an excellent opportunity for teaching about environmental legislation and fostering action-oriented engagement in climate issues.
Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai: Connecting Trees, Civic Education, and Peace
In 2004, the Nobel Committee for the first time awarded its peace prize to an environmentalist, a move intended to highlight the link between protecting natural resources and ensuring peace on earth.
Standing: Who Can Sue to Protect the Environment?
Teaching Activity by James Landman
Searching for the Seventies: Photographs from the Environmental Protection Agency's DOCUMERICA Project
Examining key photos from a 1970s federal project can serve as a point of departure for an exploration of the national issues and environmental crises of that decade.
Climate Change in the Social Studies Classroom: A Why and How to Guide Using the C3 Framework
The inquiry process outlined in the C3 Framework provides an ideal structure for teaching about climate change and debating the roles of citizens and the government.
Simulating Global Climate Summits
This classroom simulation gives students the opportunity to examine global perspectives on climate change, and the search for common solutions.
Justice and Responsibility in a Changing Climate
This lesson guides students to consider current emissions, per capita emissions, and historical emissions of various countries to deliberate the question of responsibility for climate change.
Social Studies and the Young Learner
Interdisciplinary Learning Partnerships Between TK-2 Students and Scientists for Environmental Civic Learning
In this article, Kimi Waite and Jennifer Burgin describe a three-step interdisciplinary framework for learning partnerships between TK–2 students and scientists that covers the NCSS themes SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY and PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ENVIRONMENTS. The authors showcase standards-aligned learning activities and resources to help practicing educators bring the Explorer Imprint vision into their classrooms.
Fostering Environmental Stewardship: The Great Barrier Reef Storypath
In this article, the authors describe the Great Barrier Reef Storypath unit that develops knowledge about ocean ecosystems, dispositions for personal stewardship, and skills to participate in protecting and sustaining the environment.
Teaching Ecological Citizenship Through An Earthen Early-Childhood Curriculum
Jenn Hooven, Mark Kissling, and Misty Woods show how children between the ages of 3 and 5 learn to be ecological citizens at the Child Care Center at Hort Woods on Penn State’s University Park campus. The authors demonstrate how the curriculum provides a learning focus on animals, insects, plants, weather, and nature-at-large and includes both planned and spontaneous connections to the outdoors.
Worksheet: Is This a Reliable Source?
Handout to accompany Is the “Right to Clean Water” Fake News? An Inquiry in Media Literacy and Human Rights. Please see the article for information on how to use this handout and full citations with titles, absent here for the students to discover as they go online.
Citizen Toddler: Spreading the Message about Caring for Our Planet
The article highlights how a class of toddlers spread their message about composting and repacking food. This curriculum emerged out of the students' interests, and it connected students' classroom experiences to their homes and communities, fostering a sense of power and agency in some of our youngest neighbors.
Is the “Right to Clean Water” Fake News? An Inquiry in Media Literacy and Human Rights
This article explores how to teach source evaluation to upper elementary students with a focus on the right to clean water that is recognized in a United Nations resolution of 2010, and based on the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights.
Middle Level Learning
Middle Level Learning January/February 2013
Ducks Ahoy! Plastic Debris and Ocean Currents
Caroline C. Sheffield and Ingrid S. Weiland
Middle Level Learning January/February 2019
Whose Responsibility is it to Protect the Amazon?
Misty Galloway Tucker
also in this issue:
Creating Anti-Bullying PSAs in the Classroom
Andrea Saltzman Martin, Valerie Ooka Pang, Eric J. Ginsberg, Jennifer M. Pang, Luke Duesbery, and Edward R. Dial
Surviving Eighth Grade
Andrea S. Libresco
Middle Level Learning January/February 2020
Examining the Climate Crisis in the Social Studies Classroom: Public Polling and Mock Trials
Matthew S. Hollstein and Alan Chu