by editor | Sep 2, 2025 | Environmental Literacy, K-12 Activities
GRADES
K-2
Science
Animal Ingenuity
Explore how animal use materials from the environment in building homes. Start by looking at a bird’s nest. Examine the nest carefully. Use a hand lens. List all the materials you find in the nest. How is it held together?
Social Studies
Careers Notebook
Make a “Careers Notebook” of environmentally-related careers. You can start with a fisherperson, mechanic, newpaper reporter, and a fish and game officer. Keep going from there.
Seafood Survey
Many cultures depend heavily on food from the sea for their sustenance. Have students survey family members and friends about the types of seafood they like to eat. This can be graphed on the chalkboard as well. Follow up survey with a visit to a local fish market or grocery to look at varieties of fish and shell fish up close.
Mathematics
How Many Legs?
Post pictures of an octopus, a seastar, a crab, and a gull. Review as a class the number of legs each animal has, and discuss the ways each animal’s legs help it to survive. Next challenge students with addition problems, such as: How many legs would there be if we had added the legs of the octopus and the gull? The seastar and the crab?
Geometric Shapes in Nature
Geometric shapes can be found in twigs, rocks, leaves, insects, and feathers. Look for cubes, cylinders, pyramids, cones, ovals, spheres, spirals, etc. have students put specimens in like piles. Variation: Human-made shapes. Triangles, squares, dcircles, rectangles, etc., can be found at school in sidewalks, buildings, clothing.
Language Arts
Appropriate Stories About Nature
Storytelling about nature, the outdoors, and the environment is fun. School and public libraries can be of great help in selecting books. Build a story repertoire as you would with songs.
Finding Adjectives
Give each child a small piece of paper with one or more adjectives that describe something in nature (e.g., smooth, slimy, triangular, expanded, cool, soft and green, round and gooey). Have students explore a natural area to find items that meet these descriptions. Let students take turns sharing what they found. —JOD
Fine Arts
Be a Tree
Have students identify characteristics of trees. Visit trees in a back yard, in an orchard, in a park, or in the school year.
Have the students do tree dramatizations, using their arms as the branches and their legs as the trunk. How does the tree look during a storm? How does a fruit tree look in the spring? How does a young tree look in comparison with an old tree? What would happen to change the tree in different kinds of weather or during the different seasons?
After feeling what it might be like to be a tree, have the students paint pictures of them. — EGO
Make a Refracting Telescope
Use two small convext lenses, a toilet paper tube, cardboard, rubber cember, and paper.
1. Find the focal length of one of the lenses.
2. Cut a lens-size hole in the cardboard
3. Glue the lens over the hole.
4. Trace around the toilet paper tube with a pencil over the spot in the cardboard where the lens is located.
5. Cut on this line, and glue the cardboard-mounted lens in the end of the tube.
6. Wrap a sheet of paper around the tube.
7. Tape it in place.
8. Mount the other lens in the end of the paper tube.
9. Slide the tubes back and forth.
Natural Balance
Collect natural materials, or have students collect them. Suspend them with string under a crossbar of two sticks. Driftwood, acorns, and pine cones are among materials that are effectively used. Hang these in the classroom to brighten the scenery.
GRADES
3-5
Science
Evaluating Growth
Growing plants in crowded and uncrowded situations will show the effects of overpopulation. Fill milk cartons about three-fourths full of soil. Plant several cartons with seeds — some with two or three seeds, several cartons with a small handful and several cartons with a large handful. Varying the amounts of seed in the different cartons creates different conditions under which the plants will grow. After the seeds have become seedlings, measure and record their heights on a piece of paper and draw a line graph on graph paper to represent each group of seedlings. Evaluate the plants’ growth periods in terms of the number of plants under the different conditions. —CTE
Forest Community
Discuss as a group the items a city has and make a list. Suggestions include people, factories, subways, cemetery, apartments, treffic, plumbing, stores, garbage collectors, streets, etc.
Divide the group into smaller ones of 3 to 4 each. Send each group out in a forest or wooded area and have them try and identify the natural item that corresponds to the ones on the list. —ECO
Social Studies
Non-Pointing the Finger
Take a walking tour of the neighborhood. List possible examples of non-point source pollution, both natural and human-caused. Back in the classroom, compile a class list to see how many sources were pin- “pointed.” Use magazine or newspaper pictures to make an informational display of possible sources of non-point water pollution. — FSS
Water, Water Everywhere…NOT!
Point out that last year water was rationed in parts of California. It was shut off altogether in parts of Rhode Island when a leaking gas station tank polluted it. Our carelessness can hurt the water supply. Also, it is important not to waste water if we want to be sure of having enough for our needs. Have students name some ways each of us can help protect our water supply. (Ideas include using less water, not running water needlessly, not littering near bodies of water. Also some environmentalists suggest eating less meat to save water. A vegetarian diet requires much less water in its production than is used in the raising of cattle, for example.) —KT
Mathematics
Shoot the Moon
Knowing that the moon returns to a given position every 29 1/2 days, have students figure out the dates that will have full moons for the coming calendar year. From this they can make their own calendars and check up on themselves. —JOD
Language Arts
Get Your Story Straight!
Invent or find a story that conveys an environmental message you wish to have your students think about. Divide the story into individual events that have ideas or words that allow the student to sequence them in a particular order.
As a group, or individually, have the students read the passages. Have the students number the passages so that the story can be read in the correct order. Read the story aloud in the correct sequential order.
Use discussion and questioning to strengthen the story’s message. —IEEIC
Wet Words
How important is water to our society? Just think how many different words we have to express it. Have students brainstorm words that mean water or a form of water (e.g., splash, drip, etc.) while the teacher lists them on a large sheet of butcher paper. Can your class reach one hundred? Save the list and use it later for creative writing activities.
Fine Arts
Water Drop Necklaces
Give each student a sheet of paper onto which a large water drop has already been drawn on both sides. On one side of the paper, printed inside the water drop are the words, “I’M TOXIC, DON’T FLUSH ME.” On the reverse side of the paper, inside the water drop are written the words, “WATER IS PRECIOUS, AS PRECIOUS AS…” Instruct students to draw one or several toxic items that should not be flushed down the toilet (e.g., paint, oil, chemicals) inside the water drop on the “toxic” side of the paper. On the other side instruct them to draw pictures of one or more persons or items that are precious to them (e.g., grandma, grandpa, a pet, a bicycle).
Once the drawings are completed, have the students cut out the water drop, then punch a hold near the top of the drop using a paper punch and finally thread a string of yarn through the hole to create a necklace. The necklace has a positive “precious” side and a negative “toxic” side depicted by the students’ drawings. — CON
Torn Paper Art
To help the students understand the fibrous make up of paper, tear a scrap of paper and hold one of the torn edges up to the light. Along that edge will appear a slight fuzz. Here and there tiny strands will project separately, like fine hairs. These strands are cellulose fibers.
Discuss with the children all the different materials from which fibers can be harvested to make paper. Show them fibers from a small piece of cloth to illustrate the point.
Using scraps of construction paper, tear and glue different colors to represent the forest and creatures who depend on the forest for survival. Display these pictures throughout the school to heighten awareness of the need to conserve and protect natural resources. – CON
GRADES
6-8
Science
Rainforest Pyramid
Use artistic talents to create blocks symbolizing rainforest creatures. Build a pyramid, putting the prey species such as insects at the bottom – building up until the top predators like the jaguar and harpy eagle are at the top. Show what happens when prey species are taken away – such as if insects are killed by pesticides, or small rodents are killed as pests. The same activity can be done for temperate forests of the Northwest as well, or any other particular ecosystem. —RC
Adopt a Part of Nature
Adopt part of a stream, creek, river, lake or ocean. Clean up the beaches or shores and spend time there as a class enjoying these special places.
Shorebird Safari
After introducing the class to common shorebirds and the field marks used to identify them, take your class to a beach. Shorebirds are visible year round, especially as the tide goes out. Students should try to identify special adaptations the birds have and predict the type of food they are seeking.
Social Studies
How Did They Do It?
Have students investigate the lifestyles of Native Americans on the prairie or along the coasts or in your local area. How were their needs met by these different environments?
Nature’s Tool Box
Pass out to individuals or small groups of students an assortment of simple tools: paper clips, sewing needle, letter opener, hair brush, straight pin, comb, and so on. Have students examine the tools carefully and decide what kinds of natural objects could be used or modified to make them. After students hike through an outdoor setting and collect materials, have them use the materials to make specific tools. —EGO
Mathematics
Graph the Tide
Purchase a tide table wherever fishing supplies are sold. Enlarge and photocopy each month’s chart on a separate page. Make enough copies so that each student will have one month to chart on graph paper. Post the papers in a line along the wall to see the rise and fall of the tide for the year. Teacher may want to designate a place on the paper for the base point (0.0).
Language Arts
Opposites Attract
Here is a thought-provoking idea: Collect photographs, illustrations and/or paintings from magazines — some that graphically portray a healthy, balanced environment and others that depict a damaged, unhealthy Earth. Hang these on opposite walls in the classroom to stimulate discussion and inspire writing. How does each set of images make students feel? Encourage them to think about how the healthy can be changed into the damaged and how they can help to change the damaged back into the healthy. As students learn about environmental problems and the solutions, they may go to the appropriate sides of the room to record their thoughts and ideas in two separate notebooks. For example, if a student is studying about an extinct animal, that student may record his/her concerns in a notebook located next to the unhealthy Earth artwork. If he/she knows of possible solutions and actions that can be done to help, they may be recorded on the other side of the room next to the healthy Earth artwork. Eventually, your class will have two useful notebooks filled with concerns and solutions to many environmental problems. Prioritize these and use your computer to record the top ten items that can be posted in the room for reference and distributed to family members. – TPE
Expectations
Students can write a paper that expresses their feelings about going to outdoor schooll. By knowing their anxieties, fears, and excitement, you may be able to better understand their individual needs. It is always fun for students to reread their own papers upon returning home. —JOD
Fine Arts
Touch of Color
While visiting a wooded area, pass out paper to the class and have each student, using natural materials (soil, berries, flowers, leaves, moss), draw a picture of the forest setting. Give the class an opportunity to display their work and describe their feelings about the surroundings. Encourage the students to discuss what materials were used to add color. —EGO
GRADES
9-12
Science
Symbiosis
Working with a partner, students research symbiotic relationships amongst intertidal and ocean organisms and choose one to report on. One example would be the anemone and the clownfish.
Human-created Habitats
Assign one water-dwelling animal to each student or team. Students then must design (on paper) an artificial habitat which would suite the living requirements of the animal. To do so, they must investigate and establish the characteristics of the animal’s natural habitat, including food, water, shelter, space, climate, etc. This assignment could be followed by creating models of artificial habitats.
Social Studies
Move Over!
To begin this activity, tell your class they are going to try an experiment dealing with classroom arrangements. Don’t mention the idea of overpopulation or limited resources. These concepts will surface as the outcome of the activity.
Select an area of the classroom to be used in this overpopulation experiment. an area approximately 10’x10’ should be marked with masking tape on the floor and two desks should be placed inside the area. Also provide a “Resources Box” with 4 pencils, 2 pens, 6 sheets of paper and 1 pair of scissors.
Select two volunteers to work in the square. They should take with them only the books they will need. One half hour later, select two more students to work in the square and add their desks to the other two. (Make sure to remove all “resource” from the desks first).
Continue to add students to the area in shorter intervals of time similar to the way population grows rapidly. When the area can no longer hold additional desks, add students and have them share desks. Make sure the tasks the children are involved in will require the use of resources in the “Resources Box.”
When the limited resources and overcrowded conditions lead to bedlam, bring the class together for discussion. How is this like the real world? What “resources” are in short supply? —LLC
Environmental Careers
Plan an Environmental Careers Day. Research various careers associated with the environment and invite people in to speak about their jobs. Try to get a variety of speakers to reflect the diversity of careers and educational requirements. Prepare an outline for the speakers to they will address the questions you are most interested in.
Both Sides Now
A forest management specialist, touring a watershed area, notes that in one part of the forest many diseased trees have fallen and are covering the ground. This is a serious fire hazard for the forest. The specialist recommends logging this area and replanting with young, healthy seedlings. A concerned citizen’s group protests the logging, saying that clearcutting the area will erode the soil, which will make our drinking water unclean.
Your group has been asked to list the pros and cons of logging that area of the watershed. Consider the environmental, economic and social arguments. Can you find a compromise to the problem? How do personal opinions affect your decision? —FSS
Litter Lifelines
Students collect litter in an outdoor setting — school parking lot, playground, camp, or business district. Then each student selects a piece of trash – soda can, chewing gum wrapper, potato chip bag —and makes a life line of the litter, from the origin of its natural materials to its present state. — TGP
Mathematics
Food Chain Figuring
Use the following information to create math problems. A medium-sized whale needs four hundred billion diatoms to sustain it for a few hours! The whale eats a ton of herring, about 5,000 of them. Each herring may have about 6,500 small crustaceans in its stomach, and each crustacean may contain 130,000 diatoms…
Language Arts
Forest Essay
Have students write an imaginary story using one of the following titles: a) The Life of a Pencil; b)An Autobiography of a Tree from Seed to Lumber.
Legends of the Sea
Many cultures have legends about the way the ocean and its life forms were created. Read some of these to the class, then encourage them to create their own legends about how somethings came to be. It would be helpful to have some pictures of marine life forms for the students to view. Some ideas: How the Eel Became Electric; Why Octopi Have Only Eight Arms; Before Whales could Swim; How the Hermit Crab Lost His Shell.
Fine Arts
Mother Earth
Students begin by brainstorming a list of all the ways they are dependent on the Earth. From that list should come some ideas for presenting that information to others. They may decide to have teams of students work on representing different items on the list. They may want to expres their relationship to the land written in story format, in poetry, verbally on tape, through photographs, drawings, paintings, or soft sculpture. They should come up with a theme uch as Native American philosophy, or a celebration of life-giving qualities of the Earth, or getting involved with conservation, and work from there. Ask for volunteers to write letters to local organizations requesting space to set up their display for others to view.
Encourage your students to express their feelings about our responsibility to live in harmony with the land. Is it our responsibility? Can the actions of one person make a difference? What kinds of actions does living in harmony with the Earth require? —LLC
Sources of activities:
CCN — Carrying Capacity Network Clearinghouse Bulletin, June 1992.
KT — Kind Teacher, Natl. Association for Humane and Environmental Education
IEEIC — Inegrating Environmental Education Into the Curriculum… Painlessly. National Educational Service, 1992.
RC — Rainforest Conservation, Rainforest Awareness Info. Network, 1992.
ECO — Eco-Acts: A Manual of Ecological Activities, Phyllis Ford, ed.
JOD — Just Open the Door, by Rich Gerston, Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1983.
LLC — Living Lightly in the City, Schlitz Audubon Center, 1984.
EGO- Education Goes Outdoors, Addison-Wesley 1986.
CON – Connections: Life Cycle Kinesthetic Learning. The Energy Office, Grand Junction, CO 1993.
CTE – Consider the Earth by Julie M. Gates, Teacher Ideas Press, 1989.
FSS – From Source to Sea, Greater Vancouver Regional District 1993.
GGC – Growing Greener Cities and Environmental Education Guide
American Forests, Washington DC 1992
LCA – Let’s Clean the Air, Greater Vancouver Regional District 1993.
NTW – No Time to Waste, Greater Vancouver Regional District 1993.
TPE – The Private Eye, Kerry Ruef, The Private Eye Project, Seattle, 1992.
by editor | Sep 2, 2025 | Critical Thinking, Learning Theory, STEM, Teaching Science, Technology
by Kathryn Davis
According to the United Nations, each year enough plastic is thrown away to circle the earth four times, and these plastics can take over 1000 years to degrade! Sobering facts such as these and images illustrating the devastating effect of plastic waste on wildlife can leave many feeling paralyzed and hopeless.
While there are startling examples of the negative impact humans have had on the earth, there are also stories of innovation and incredible problem solving. I shared with my students the story of the engineer in India who created edible utensils, replacing plastic forks and knives with cutlery that is both delicious and eco-friendly, and the graduate student designing biodegradable clamshell containers from actual clamshells. I want my students to be inspired by these stories, and to feel hopeful that through human innovation and design, we can begin to tackle problems and make changes that can alter our current environmental trajectory.
This is why I’m so excited about the Engineering Design Performance Standards from the NGSS. These standards are the perfect way for students to learn how to design solutions to real problems we face as a society. Often in science classes we bring awareness to issues such as climate change and pollution, but we may fail to arm students with the tools they’ll need to design solutions to these problems. Engineering provides these tools and is also a way to engage even the most reluctant students. This year, I’m working with a group of high school students who have been unsuccessful in science in the past, and I was looking for a new way to help them connect with their learning.
Why Are We Learning This?
When I was introduced to Science and Innovation — The Boeing Company and Teaching Channel collaboration — through my work with the Tch NextGen Science Squad, I couldn’t wait to test drive the engineering-focused units with my own students. The ten units are geared toward middle school, the “sweet spot” for curriculum development. This curriculum can be easily adapted to fit both elementary and high school needs as well, by making modifications that will serve your students where they are academically.
I chose the Polymers for the Planet unit because it had a direct connection to what my students were already learning about photosynthesis, yet provided a real world application. In this unit, students use biopolymers (starches) to develop and test a bioplastic. Yes, we’ve all learned that plants make food, but what else can we do with those glucose molecules? What useful products can be developed from the starches created by plants? And how can this help solve a major environmental problem?
This unit allows me to answer that ever-present question in the classroom: Why are we learning this? How does this apply to my life?
I reached out to Jessica Levine, one of the authors of the curriculum and the teacher highlighted in the unit’s accompanying Polymers video, for tips and suggestions. She brought to my attention a great number of resources highlighting the environmental impact of plastics that allowed me to provide my students with some much-needed perspective on the state of our environment. It was so helpful to be able to reach out to her via Teaching Channel, and later to chat on the phone, exchanging ideas for how to best teach this unit.
Considerations For My Students
With any curriculum, teachers will always consider the unique needs of their students. Here are a few things I had to consider about my high school sophomores:
• The majority of my class is considered “at-risk,” in addition to being comprised of a high percentage of special education students and English language learners
• Collecting and analyzing data is challenging and they lack experience
• Using mathematical operations to analyze data will be difficult
• My students have reading skills that are at or below the eighth grade level
Conclusion: My students need a lot of scaffolding!
In order to scaffold, I provided tools to help my students “read to learn,” including an anticipation guide and Frayer model to guide them as they read about bioplastics. These strategies helped my students focus on what they already knew about the topic before reading, and then directed their attention to specific details while reading for background information. Instead of the provided notebook materials from the downloadable Polymers for the Planet unit plan, students continued to work in their classroom interactive notebook, where we recorded vocabulary, formulas, and data throughout the project.
We used the engineering design process diagram to keep us focused throughout the project. Each day we revisited this image and talked about where we were in the process, and where we were going next.
The CER Framework
Arguing from evidence using the CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) format is another new aspect of the NGSS Science and Engineering practices. To help my students, I provided graphic organizers to record their evidence, and used sentence frames to guide their reasoning to support a claim for their redesign. The opportunity for students to use evidence to drive their redesign was powerful — this process helped to solidify for them the importance of using data to drive decisions. After their prototypes were tested, they were eager to find out which formulas yielded the best results, and used this information to make new iterations to their design.
Surprising Outcomes
Here’s what we’ve discovered so far:
• When testing tensile strength of the bioplastics, the testing setup failed due to the large amount of weight that the plastics were able to withstand. This led to students engineering and redesigning the test itself! When the provided protocol failed them, they came up with creative solutions and collaborated in ways that I haven’t previously observed. When one group observed another struggling with the same issues, they collaborated to build new solutions and test ideas.
• Of course, not all of the bioplastics were easy to test for various reasons. But because students had a sense of ownership and wanted to test the product they designed, the level of problem solving I observed was far beyond that in previous lab activities. The students were motivated to test and gather data for their samples, and figured out how to make this possible, with very little help from me.
• I saw opportunities for individual students to shine who didn’t usually do so in class. One particular student became a creative problem solver and designed multiple ways to test tensile strength. He also helped other groups, showing an interest in class that I hadn’t previously seen.
We’re now at the stage of putting it all together. Students are creating presentations, and in an effort to motivate them to do their best, I’ve invited other adults (teachers, administrators, instructional assistants) to serve as an authentic audience to view the students’ presentations about their engineering design process. Wish them luck!
Kathryn Davis is a science teacher at Hood River Valley High School in Hood River, Oregon. She has been teaching science for 13 years. Kathryn is a Stanford graduate, Teach For America Bay Area alumni, and Amgen Biotechnology Experience teacher. She is currently working as a Professional Growth Coach for her school district and is excited to be a part of Teaching Channel’s Tch Next Gen Science Squad. Connect with her on Twitter: @biokathryn.
by editor | Sep 2, 2025 | Environmental Literacy
by Joanna Wright
Will my child be ready for Kindergarten?” As nature-based early childhood programs spring up across the country, this is a common query from interested families. While parents want to offer their children a chance to play outside, some also wonder if searching for bugs and traipsing through puddles will adequately prepare their child for the next stages of formal education.
What is usually meant by “Will my child be ready for Kindergarten?” refers to academic expectations, particularly reading and writing. In our outdoor classroom at Fiddleheads Forest School in Seattle, “walls” are interlacing cedar boughs rather than text-filled bulletin boards, and most winter days are too damp for paper and pencils. It might seem like a challenging environment in which to provide early literacy instruction, but our outdoor setting is also a source of unique opportunity.
What does an outdoor environment offer for early literacy development?
A core practice for language and literacy development is one that pre-dates any sort of ABCs worksheet: rich, reciprocal dialogue. Early learners construct ideas about how the world works through exploration and social interaction. The act of listening is a key element of supporting these young investigator-conversationalists. By listening and responding, teachers can extend children’s comments into more complex linguistic and cognitive territory.
The outdoor classroom is a rich and storied environment, full of possibilities for teachers and students to encounter the world together. Dialogue arises from this activity of joint attention. A slug gliding across a decomposing log, a Steller’s jay’s jarring call overhead, a new bud opening up. Each phenomenon presents the opportunity to use language as a tool for observation and inquiry. What do you notice? What do you think is happening here? How can we find out more?
Socio-Dramatic Play
“Oh! I saw a monster! I saw a big monster. Let’s get food. We have to get – put – food. Because I saw a big monster that was coming and eating all of the food for the baby monsters.” (Gathering seeds, throwing handfuls onto a path.) “Escape from the dungeon!” “Phew. I escaped. I escaped, because I am not afraid of monsters. I thought it was a monster, but I was super-duper-duper brave.”
The play-worlds created by children have an important role in language and literacy development. These are worlds of stories, conflict, and experimentation. They are words of negotiation, as narratives join and come to life. Renowned teacher and writer Vivian Gussin Paley (1986) describes how young children “know intuitively that once they begin to pretend, they become accountable to the community of pretenders.” In this community, as in any community, communication is paramount.
During pretend play, children talk more, speak in lengthier utterances, and use more complex language (e.g. future tense, interrogative clauses, conditional verbs, descriptive adjectives, mental state verbs) than when they are engaged in other activities.
(The Power of Play, Minnesota Children’s Museum)
An outdoor classroom is a wondrous, textured, dynamic habitat for imaginative play. With towering trees, foliage in which to feel hidden, unexpected visitors such as squirrels and owls, and cones falling to the ground, the ever-changing wild world provides an on-going stream of information with which the imagination can engage. And because many of the physical materials or “props” are natural items whose function in play is not pre-determined, children are required to work together to attribute meaning to these different items and integrate them into the story.
Emergent Reading and Writing
Many outdoor programs use field guides and other books to complement hands-on experience. A field guide, especially one with a layout that is accessible to early learners, is a wonderful supplement on exploratory walks. Using it encourages children to notice patterns and distinguish visual details, while building interest in printed material.
Another staple practice among many outdoor schools is that of journaling. Journals are books (ideally waterproof!) in which students can record their observations in pictures and words. Sometimes, the teacher may write down what the child dictates; or the child may choose to do the writing him or herself. These journals provide a record of specific things that captured the children’s interest, as well as documentation of students’ drawing and writing capacity over the course of the year.
Phonological Awareness
Activities that foster phonological awareness can be woven into the outdoor classroom experience. New vocabulary is introduced contextually, as teachers and students seek language that reflects the phenomena they encounter. Songs, rhymes, and games can be adapted to involve oral language, movement, and interaction with the environment itself. This is especially valuable during the winter months when it may be important to keep warm by being physically active.
Laying the Foundation for Literacy
Early literacy involves a suite of interrelated capacities, including oral language comprehension, print knowledge and print motivation, and phonological awareness. According to NAEYC (2003),
Children’s early reading and writing learning … is embedded in a larger developing system of oral communication. Early literacy is an emerging set of relationships between reading and writing. These relationships are situated in a broader communication network of speaking and listening, whose components work together to help the learner negotiate the world and make sense of experience.
(Kathleen A. Roskos, James F. Christie, and Donald Richgels, p. 2)
It can be easy as a teacher to feel a pressure to “produce,” to send children home with an elaborate craft or scrawled-upon paper that shows “what we did” that day at school. Of course, such activities, skillfully designed, have their place in a well-rounded preschool curriculum. I remind myself each day, however, that it is the quality of my presence—my attention and engagement in interaction—that matters most.
That quality of presence supports the type of dialogue and play that fosters language development. It is also the creative fuel necessary for weaving sound, reading, and writing into experience in meaningful ways. An outdoor classroom can provide a high degree of connectivity between all of these modes of learning, laying the foundation for literacy by treating it as an integrated, relevant, joyful part of students’ development.
A Community of Practitioners
In the course of writing this article, I reached out to other programs in the newly-formed Washington Nature Preschool Association and invited educators to share their experience with the opportunities and challenges of early literacy instruction out-of-doors. While our programs vary widely, I found that we share many of the same questions regarding how to make the most of this unique type of learning environment. I’d like to thank Stephanie Day at Roots Forest School in McCall, Idaho, Sarah Salazar-Tipton at Olympic Nature Experience, and Janet Killmer at Tacoma Outdoor Ability Development School, for sharing their perspectives on early literacy in their programs. If you’d like to join our conversation on this subject, please feel free to get in touch. ❏
Joanna Wright is a lead teacher with Fiddleheads Forest School, a program of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens in Seattle, WA. Before coming to Fiddleheads, she trained as a naturalist educator at Alderleaf Wilderness College where she specialized in wildlife tracking, and holds a Level III Track and Sign Certification. She is particularly interested in the significance of direct ecological experience for health, development and learning.
by editor | Sep 2, 2025 | Environmental Literacy
THE RESEARCH: Liddicoat, K. R., & Krasny, M. E. (2014). Memories as useful outcomes of residential outdoor environmental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 45(3), 178–193.
For students, spending several days at a residential outdoor environmental education (ROEE) program creates many new and powerful experiences, some of which are remembered for years to come. Yet, to date, only limited research has considered the role of memories as an outcome of environmental education.
This study investigated the memories of students five years after they completed an ROEE program. The gathered memories served as a means of qualitatively measuring the long-term impact of these programs on the students’ environmental knowledge, behaviors, social interactions, and personal narratives.
There are many different types of memory. For the purposes of this study, the authors focused on long-term episodic memories, which are memories of a specific event or episode, rather than generalized knowledge (semantic memories). Specifically, the authors focused on autobiographical memories, which are considered a subset of episodic memories that create a part of a person’s coherent life story. These memories were considered best suited for investigating the long-term impact of the ROEE programs.
In addition to learning what the participants remembered about the programs, the authors wanted to know how the participants have used these memories. Previous research into memory, reported in the psychology literature, has divided the uses of episodic autobiographic memories into three main categories: directive function, social function, and self function. Directive function refers to when a memory of a past experience is used to direct action and make predictions about the future. Social function is when a memory is used to converse and share stories, thus forging new relationships and maintaining intimacy with friends and family. Self function is when a memory enables a person to develop a coherent sense of self over time. The authors asked: How do memories of ROEE serve directive, social, or self functions? The authors paid special attention to directive functions, since directing future actions and behavior is most closely aligned with the goals of environmental education.
Data for this study were collected at two different research sites: the North Cascades Institute’s Mountain School in North Cascades National Park, Washington; and the Teton Science Schools near Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
The program at the North Cascades Institute (NCI) was a three-day camping experience for fifth graders designed to foster an appreciation for the local biota and natural and cultural history of North Cascades National Park, as well as stewardship of the environment. The Teton Science Schools program consisted of two different three-day programs. One was for fifth graders, designed to teach the students about different ecosystems in Grand Teton National Park through inquiry-based scientific investigation and encourage environmentally friendly behaviors, such as limiting food waste. The other program was for seventh graders, and focused on winter ecology through a series of field experiences and outdoor recreation activities such as snowshoeing and cross country skiing.
Study participants were high school students (now in tenth or twelfth grade) who had attended one of these programs five years prior to the study. The first author visited classrooms at both schools and interviewed willing students. The sample included 18 former participants from NCI and 36 from the Teton Science Schools.
The authors found that the interviewed students recalled many powerful memories from their ROEE experience and that these memories were continuing to serve a variety of functions in their lives. Many of the specific themes that emerged were similar at both sites, with different emphases that reflected the intentions of each program, as well as the different backgrounds of the students.
The most prominent uses of the memories were directive, such as inspiring an interest in outdoor recreation and environmental stewardship. For most students who participated in the program at NCI, the experience was their first time camping in a tent, especially without their families. Many of these students expressed appreciation for the experience and the desire to do it again. That said, most of them had not been able to actually go camping again, which the authors suggest may be due to their lack of independence as minors. The students from NCI also shared many environmental stewardship behaviors they had implemented into their current lives. They attributed these behaviors to what they learned during the program. These were mostly personal behaviors readily applied at home, such as turning off the water when not in use and not wasting food.
Participants of the Teton Science Schools program reported the knowledge gained in the course had been directly applied to their daily lives, recreational pursuits, and work. Many of the students in the program were regularly partaking in outdoor recreation activities both before and after participating in the course, and so were able to put to use specific knowledge about the outdoors, such as how to look at snow layers and predict the avalanche danger.
The students also credited their experience from the course with inspiring greater enthusiasm for environmental stewardship, especially with regard to learning about and caring for the local landscape.
The participants shared that the ROEE program had also significantly helped them with their social skills (considered a directive function) and had served for years as the basis of social interaction (a social function). Social skills included learning to work with others, make new friends, and be more outgoing within group settings. The memories served as a basis for social interaction by being a source of shared experience that facilitated reminiscing with friends who also attended the program. The memories were also shared with family and friends who did not attend the program, which promoted participation in the program by younger students and siblings.
Some of the shared memories seemed to serve a self-function, which are the memories that give a sense of continuity to one’s life. Many students reported the trip was one of the most memorable experiences of elementary school and, overall, a fun and positive one. The authors propose that these types of memories may relate to self-confidence and a sense of empowerment needed to pursue environmental goals.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
This study is one of the first to explore the use of memories as a measurable outcome of environmental education experiences, considering whether these memories can be used to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of a program.
Using the three memory-use categories defined in the psychology literature—self, social, and directive—the authors investigated the different ways in which memories of a residential environmental education program had impacted students’ lives, as reported five years after the experience. Results showed that the memories served a variety of functions that were aligned with environmental education’s goals, such as promoting environmental stewardship and an interest in outdoor recreation. ❏
by editor | Sep 1, 2025 | At-risk Youth, Climate Change & Energy, Equity and Inclusion, Indigenous Peoples & Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Language Arts
First-person narratives bring climate change closer to home.
By Lauren G. McClanahan
“So, is her house actually sinking?”
“Yes, Heather, it is.”
“But, that’s so sad! I want to do something about that!”
No doubt my preservice secondary education student, Heather, is familiar with the topic of climate change. Everywhere we look, we see media coverage. But there still seems to be something missing. There still appears to be a disconnect, for my preservice teachers, anyway, between what they read about online and what they see in their day-to-day lives. And this has huge implications for their futures as public school teachers. One way to address this disconnect has been to put a face to the topic of climate change. By connecting all of my “Heathers” to students who live in places where climate change is having actual, observable effects, a topic that was once only theoretical to many of my students becomes real.
Kwigillingok, Alaska, vs. Bellingham, Wash.
My teacher-ed students at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., come from multiple walks of life, are at different points in their educational and working careers, and have different goals for their futures as middle and high school teachers. However, one commonality that my students tend to share is their geography. Most hail from western Washington state—up and down the “I-5” corridor. Take the freeway north, and in 15 minutes, you’re in Canada. A few hours south, and you’ve crossed into Oregon. On a daily basis, my students don’t give much thought to climate change. No doubt, many claim to be “green” through-and-through. They recycle, use compact fluorescent bulbs, and buy local whenever possible. And these efforts are important; but as for the big changes—the catastrophic ones happening in our circumpolar regions—my students just don’t see it. In contrast, the students of Kwigillingok, Alaska, see these changes every day and can document firsthand how their village is changing because of them.
Kwigillingok is a small Yup’ik fishing village in western Alaska that sits along the Bering Sea. With a population of about 400, the residents depend on a subsistence culture to survive, much as they have done for thousands of years. Fishing, hunting, and creating and selling crafts are as integral today as they have been for centuries. However, our warming earth is now threatening that culture.
I began working with the students of “Kwig” several years ago, when one of my former students was hired to teach in the Lower Kuskokwim School District. What started as a simple pen-pal relationship between her high school students and my college students slowly transformed into the project described here. And while the students have changed over the years, the questions that they were asking of one another became more focused, until we decided that the topic of climate change was the main issue that everyone wanted to discuss.
The biggest challenge faced by the residents of Kwig is the melting of the permafrost, that layer of frozen ground that lies just below the earth’s surface and that is supposed to stay frozen year-round. Recently, that permafrost has begun to melt, and as a result, major changes are taking place. Many homes and other structures in the village are beginning to sink, leaning to one side as the permafrost they were built upon begins to shift. In addition to sinking homes, new, invasive species of plants are beginning to take root and grow, which in turn is slowly changing the migratory patterns of big game such as the local musk ox populations. Fishing, too, has been affected by the warming trend, and fish camps have had to relocate depending on the changing location of the fish. These are big changes that can be seen and felt and experienced daily in the lives of Kwig’s high school students. It was these changes that they wanted to tell us about, to tell the future teachers “down there” to share with all of their future students. They wanted to let everyone know that climate change is real and has a face and a name—hence the “First Person Singular” project. This was a project to create a warning for the rest of us, those of us who do not have to prop our houses up with sandbags or who do not have to go hungry due to a lack of fish in our rivers. Or at least not yet.
The “First Person Singular” Project
As mentioned, the relationship between Kwig and WWU began when a former student of mine was hired into the district. I had always been interested in Native cultures and found this to be an opportunity to weave that interest into the literacy classes that I teach. The more the students shared with us about their culture and their harsh, yet beautiful landscape, the more I felt as if I had to visit. In an initial visit, I met with the teachers and students at several village schools. I saw firsthand what the students of this region had to share with my students, not only from a cultural perspective, but also a scientific one as we delved deeper into the issue of climate change and its effect on their culture.
Recently, one of my current students approached me about completing his student teaching internship at the Kwig school. “I just want a very rural, very challenging school setting,” he told me. Well, did I have the place for him! Luckily, my intrepid student would not mind hauling his own water, which is what he would have to do, since many of the buildings in Kwig have no running water. He did, however, have the luxury of a newly installed incinerator toilet in his cabin—preferable to a Honey Bucket. Before he left, my student (a future English teacher) and I had talked about doing a project with his students that would combine disciplines and allow the students’ own voices to be heard. The concept of place-based education, of focusing curriculum on local issues, had been an important part of our university classes, and my student wanted to try it out. He liked the combination of using the local setting as the classroom, and letting his students “direct” their learning—two of the main components of place-based education. So, with his students’ input, a project was decided upon, and I made plans to come up and help facilitate the project after he eased into his new role as student teacher. I figured that another visit would give me an opportunity not only to formally observe my student teacher, but also work in person with this project and these students that I had been thinking about for some time.
Before I traveled to Kwig for the second time, I asked the high school students (with whom I communicated by email) to photograph any evidence of climate change that they could see in their village. Then, once I arrived, my student teacher and I sat down with each student to talk about the photos they had taken. This technique of using “auto-driven photo elicitation” (as it is called in the field of visual studies) proved to be beneficial. Auto-driven photo elicitation is simply when people involved in a research study take their own photographs, and use those photos as the basis for later interviews (Clark, 1999). The photos gave us a starting point—something on which to focus our conversation. Otherwise, I was afraid that the conversation might become too abstract, or even too uncomfortable (seeing as how the students had never met me face-to-face, but only through email). However, by focusing on the photos, we were able to get to the heart of what was important to the students. After all, we were talking about their photos, of evidence of climate change in their village.
After we spent time talking about the photos (individually and as a group), I asked students to pick a favorite photo and write about why it was the best choice to illustrate the effects of climate change. Because we had talked about the photos first, the writing part was easy. They could describe, in detail, why their photos mattered, and why their audience, my preservice teachers, needed to know about them. Then, after they had written their paragraphs, I asked students to read their paragraphs (or parts of their paragraphs) into a digital voice recorder so that we could incorporate their own voices (literally) into our final product. One of the students even volunteered to play the piano so that our project would have a soundtrack.
One of the students photographed a leaning building. He described it this way:
“The world is changing. It’s getting warmer and warmer. Ice is melting everywhere, even underground. The melting of the permafrost causes hills, houses, and other buildings to sink. Permafrost is a section in the ground where everything is frozen. It melts and refreezes around the year, but lately, there has been more melt than freeze. If we don’t do something, we could lose this beautiful land that we lived in for thousands of years, forever.”
He then wrote the same paragraph in his native Yup’ik language, and read them both aloud. This was powerful. Another student photographed seagulls that were hanging around later in the season than usual. She explained that “it’s unusual for them to still be here [in October], which suggests that [the ground] is not as cold as it looks.
Once the paragraphs had been written and recorded, students responded to several prompts that they created themselves, such as, “What is worth preserving in Kwig?” One student responded, “We don’t have a lot of money. We need to stay near the ocean so we can fish. We don’t want to have to move farther and farther back every few years. We can’t leave, but we can’t stay, either.” When asked what message they wanted to send to the preservice teachers in Washington, one student said, “Please understand that what you do down there has a great impact on us up here. Understand that we’re all in this together. Climate change doesn’t just affect polar bears—it affects people, too.”
The project’s final phase was to put our photos, words, and voices into a very short iMovie. The students helped plan the sequencing, and then we put it together. And while the “film” was only four and a half minutes long, it sent a strong message to the preservice teachers it was meant to educate. After viewing the movie, one of my preservice teachers wrote, “Now that I know this—now that I have seen these kids’ faces and heard their stories—I can’t ‘un-know’ it. Now I have to decide what I can do about it, both in my classroom, and in my everyday life.”
Larger Implications
Place-based education, while not a new concept, is particularly well-suited for the inclusion of student voices. With its aim of grounding learning in local phenomena and students’ lived experience (Smith, 2002), it can be easily adapted to fit any number of school curricula. For example, nearly every city or town has local issues that can be studied in greater depth, be they environmental issues (toxic wastewater), social justice issues (migrant workers’ access to health care), or issues dealing with the economy (how city taxes are used to fund local schools). In the case of our project, climate change was an obvious topic for exploration, given our fortunate connection with students in the far North. Plus, the topic fits nicely into the definition of “sustainability education.” Within WWU’s Woodring College of Education, our underlying assumption is that education for sustainability (as opposed to education about sustainability) will result in citizens who are more likely to engage in personal behavior or contribute to public policy decisions in the best interest of the environmental commons and future generations (Nolet, 2009).
Personal Implications
When students take control of their learning, and take control of how that learning can be demonstrated, amazing things can happen. For the Kwig high school students, they learned that they had not only some very important things to say, but also an audience that was receptive to and respectful of their words and ideas. For my preservice teachers, they learned that they are not the experts on everything, and sometimes they have to step aside to let the experts step forward (in this case, the students themselves). This idea of relinquishing power in the classroom can intimidate a new teacher, but it is an important lesson, especially regarding student engagement.
After viewing the high school students’ film, my preservice teachers had a lot to say about place-based education, and how this project connects students to their local communities, and society as a whole. One student commented, “Obviously, the kids in the movie care about what is happening to their homes and land. We need that heart in schools, or what they are learning means nothing.”
Many students also commented on the topic of climate change. “Now I know why I take the time to recycle! It’s not much, but it’s a small step I can take to help preserve the world’s cultures.” Another student said, “Now that I know this—about the challenges facing Kwig due to climate change—I feel obligated to do something about it.” Climate change now has a name and a face. It’s personal.
Similar projects that focus on topics of local concern could be created within other curricula. Any place-based study could benefit from hearing the voices of those most affected. Travel to each place is certainly not mandatory. Using even simple technology such as email or Skype could connect classrooms across town or across the world. Because, in the end, it is all about the relationships that can be forged as a result of storytelling. The more we know about others through their stories, in their own voices, the more inspired we might be to recognize those voices in our own.
References
Clark, C. (1999). The autodriven interview: A photographic viewfinder into children’s experience. Visual Sociology, 14, 39-50.
Nolet, V. W. (2009). Preparing sustainably literate teachers.Teachers College Record, 111(5).
Smith, G. A. (2002). Place-based education: Learning to be where we are. Phi Delta Kappan (April), 584-594.
Lauren G. McClanahan (Lauren.mcclanahan@wwu.edu) is a professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.
