Earth Day Lessons and Resources
Earth Day is one of my favorite days of the school year. 
Each year, my high school students lead a kindergarten field trip at our ponds, trails, and outdoor classrooms. You don’t need ponds and trails to promote environmental awareness. I’ve rounded up some excellent resources to help you find the best Earth Day lesson for your classroom.
“An environment-based education movement–at all levels of education–will help students realize that school isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder
3 Websites to Help You Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
My previous Earth Day post is a great place to start. Focussing on the 
3 Rs, students can measure their ecological footprint and find out where to recycle anything.
Earth Day Curriculum Resources, Grades K-5
Need Earth Day ideas for elementary students? The NEA has you covered. Find detailed Earth Day lesson plans, lesson units, links, games, activities, and more.
Ecology Disrupted
This site from the American Museum of Natural History provides case studies that use real scientific data to examine the impact of actions from students’ everyday on the environment. Designed for middle and high school students, the lessons take 4-7 class periods and explore the following questions:
- How might being able to drive between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in just four hours put bighorn sheep at risk?
- How might snowy and icy roads affect Baltimore area’s water supply?
- In what ways have people caused the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem to become more vulnerable to algal blooms and dead zones?
Climate Education
April 16-22 is Climate Education Week. Earth Day Network has a great collection of K-12 climate science lessons, videos, and resources in their Climate Education Week Toolkit.
Two of my Favorite Interactive Climate Change Sites
How Much Warmer Was Your City in 2015? – This New York Times interactive lets you enter your city to see how much warmer it was during the hottest year on record.
The Breathing Earth – A great visual simulation that shows carbon dioxide emissions, birth rates, and death rates for every country in the world.
Earth Day Lessons on iPad
The folks at Apple teamed up with the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation to create 3 new Earth Day Lessons on iPad. You can view each lesson individually or get the resources for all 3 Earth
Day Lessons through the Lessons for Earth Day Course on iTunesU. This year’s lessons include:
Other Earth Day lessons on iPad:
Monitoring Environmental Change with iPads
My iBook on using technology in outdoor education provides teachers with everything they need to start an environmental monitoring program on their campus. This book makes it easy for teachers to empower students to contribute to the scientific community’s understanding of one of the most important issues facing us today. Download it for FREE.
Looking for More Earth Day Ideas?
The following sites provide large collections of Earth Day lessons, links, activities, and more.
- Education World’s Earth Day Lesson Plans
- Edutopia’s Earth Day Lesson Plans, Reading Lists, and Classroom Ideas
- Scholastic’s Earth Day teaching ideas, lesson plans, and student activities.
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Enjoying Earth Day Texas in South Carolina, thanks to your technology and email! I will forward to other teachers . . .
I’m glad you found it helpful Nancy. Happy Earth Day!