Teaching the Environment in All Our Classes

In my previous blog I mentioned the California Environmental Education Initiative, which I just completed a short course about at UCLA Extension. The final for the course was to make a PowerPoint to tell colleagues about the curriculum. I thought I'd present parts of the PowerPoint here to tell the wider story.

The curriculum is based on the CA Environmental Principles and Concepts. It correlates with the CA Content K-12 Content Standards, replacing, rather than supplementing, what you already teach for the content standards for subjects like ELA, History, Economics, Science and Social Science. A  sample of units for 3rd grade is shown below, and a student workbook for Kindergarten to the right. As you can see, they replace textbook materials for units in Biology, Geography, California History and Economy. You can access the curriculum for the subjects you teach on the Curriculum page. (There is a special password for the TE documents, which you access by signing in.)

 We are leaving a damaged earth to our students. We need to prepare them for the new environmental conditions through our teaching. But it should be fun, challenging and colorful. The EEI has done a fantastic job preparing this curriculum. Be sure to find the materials for the classes you teach to see for yourself!
I will delve into some of the materials in my next post.