Earth Day: In the Classroom

Students in grades K-12 make a simple solar oven using a pizza box that gets hot enough to warm up cookies and other treats, like s'mores.

Students in grades K-8 compare compact fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs to measure the difference between being energy-efficient and energy-wasteful.

Students in grades K-4 use a recycled jar to make and decorate a toothbrush holder reminding them to turn off the faucet when not in use.

This lesson, in which students research worms in order to create a classroom habitat, incorporates reading and writing across content areas as well as math and science activities.

Students in grades K-8 learn an easy technique to measure the presence of drafts in their homes and classrooms.

This EDN-produced Environmental Education Program features interdisciplinary lessons, classroom activities, and tools that will help you and your students explore environmental issues during class. There are lessons for students of all ages, and they're designed to be integrated into other subject areas, including social studies and English.

After reading the story Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, K-12 students will build an alarm system for something in the classroom, as the main character Leigh does to protect his lunchbox from thieves. Students will learn about alarms and use their creativity to create an alarm system to protect their lockers, desk, or classroom door.

Students in grades 5-8 search their classroom for energy connections and record the ways they use energy throughout a typical day in an energy detective journal.

The Environmental Protection Agency's lesson plans cover all topics related to the earth sciences, including air, ecosystems, climate change, water, and more. All the featured lessons are available for download, and there are resources for every grade.

Using various reading strategies and resources, students explore the issue of food waste. They also create persuasive arguments and blog posts examining this topic.

Students in grades 5-8 explore heat transfer from rock to water, energy transfer between fluids in a binary geothermal power plant, salinity’s effect on the boiling point of water, emissions from a geothermal power plant and those from a fossil fuel power plant, and the performance of a model dry steam power plant with turbine blades and steam jets of different size and number.

The purpose of the project was to help schools provide a safe and healthy environment. The project was also designed to provide teachers with standards-based tools to introduce the concepts of waste reduction and pollution prevention to students.

Students plant a garden and study its growth using the inquiry process of questioning and exploring. As they research and study, students record their observations in a field journal.

Teaching sustainability is now more important than ever.

Students learn about organic gardening by developing their own research questions, conducting research, gardening at their school, creating signs about their plants, and presenting their research to the class.

This rich collection of video lesson plans, created by The Nature Conservancy, is a great starting point. There are science-based lessons with accompanying videos, virtual field trip videos, and Meet the Scientist videos.

How can we convince others to agree with us on important issues? In this lesson, students explore relevant environmental issues and gather information to write persuasive essays.

Students discover that they can make a world of difference when they participate in the online Earth Day bag program.

Although this collection was produced in 2012, it's still extremely useful for Earth Day 2016. Science NetLinks has produced a big list of lessons and learning tools on a variety of earth science subjects, and they're all easy to browse by grade level.

The complete Think Earth Curriculum—nine units from preschool to middle-school—has been used since the 1990s to teach students about the importance of a clean, healthy environment and about what they can do.

Promote environmental awareness with these lessons, activities, and printables for grades 5-8.

Teach your students the importance of green energy with creative lesson plans, labs, projects and other activities for grades K-12 on energy-related topics.

An array of environmental and science based lesson plans, activities and ideas for K-12.

This downloadable toolkit from the National Environment Education Foundation offers a ton of useful ideas for earth science learning. With links to activities and lesson plans, this offers some insights into teaching STEM subjects through the lens of environmental learning.

The website "I Want to Be Recycled" is a one-stop shop for students interested in the science of recycling. Produced by nonprofit Keep America Beautiful, the resource features accessible information about recyclable materials, a Recycling 101 course, and information students can use to get involved.

This roundup of PBS LearningMedia resources is extremely useful for teachers. And there are tons of great multimedia tools to engage students in this collection, including inspiring documentaries and video clips, interactive games, and lesson plans.

This PBS Parents reading list features great titles for children in grades K-5.

Looking for a good book to learn about the environment? You'll find plenty to choose from in this list from Project Learning Tree. Although it was produced in 2014, the books are timeless and informative, and they're grouped by grade level.