Free Earth Day Resources for Teachers
Climate Change Lessons Plans are Available for Free School Use
Mar 30, 2009
Earth Day gets a lot of attention in public schools, and most gifted students will be in the regular classrooms with their classroom teachers. Regular classrooms can provide gifted students with enrichment by seeking out some of the interesting and engaging climate change lessons available through FREE, the U.S. government's website that offers resources for teachers.
Online Climate Change Activity for Elementary Students
Using the Federal Resources for Educational Excellence's Climate Change channel as a starting point, teachers can find a vast array of worksheets, websites, and lesson plans. Some of the best elementary activities include the Climate Change Kids Page Animations from the Environmental Protection Agency, which teaches about the global warming process. Students can learn and take online quizzes about global warming, the carbon cycle, and the water cycle.
Online Climate Change Activity for Secondary Students
The FREE site also links students to Ask Dr. Global Change, which allows students to submit questions and explore answered questions about Climate Change. The questions are detailed and the answers are in-depth, and this would be an excellent resource for gifted students, even upper elementary students with probing questions.
Climate Change Lesson Plan Collections for Teachers
The FREE site offers an almost overwhelming amount of climate change resources for teachers. Some of the most adaptable units for teachers wanting to differentiate for gifted kids includes:
- GLOBE from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which connects almost 10,000 teachers and students with lesson plans and activities related to Earth Day and climate change.
- National Center for Atmospheric Research produces the Climate Discovery Teacher's Guide, which offers lesson plans about the earth's magnetic field, ancient climates, and climate changes.
- Science Education Resource Center's Teach the Earth, which offers a huge collection for teachers and lesson plans about the biosphere, energy, geology, geochemistry, mineralogy, ocean studies, petrology, and the solar system.
- California State University helps teachers introduce climate change, earthquakes, and global warming and with Virtual Courseware, a free collection of online activities and assessments.
The National Science Foundation's Exploring Earth Visualizations offers pictures that help connect all the lessons and worksheets that teachers collect through the other resources, and sometimes a great picture can bring the whole unit together.
There are currently 43 resources available in the Federal Resources for Educational Excellence's Climate Change channel, and some are more appropriate for gifted education than others. Having such a wide range allows regular classroom teachers to differentiate based on student needs. Some elementary students might be ready to work on the secondary websites while other students in class are working on sites geared for younger students.
For more information about Earth Day activities and reading, please read Online Games and Reading for Earth Day 2009.
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