Through a series of three learning experiences, taking place across multiple weeks, students will participate in inquiry-based learning about the county in which they live and learn. Students will write informative pieces to teach others about the natural and cultural communities of Adams County.

Modified 5E lesson plan to match the CEE inquiry model of the ELS of WI.

The Boston School Forest is a field trip destination for 6,000 students each year providing high quality outdoor environmental education programs that expand and authenticate classroom learning. Science education in our district is transitioning to provide greater opportunity for inquiry, and teachers are now searching for resources that can be used in either face-to-face or e-learning formats. The Backyard Habitat Series focuses on connecting kids to an outdoor place through use of sensory observation, exploring the natural features and animals, and engaging in the improvement of habitat for neighborhood wildlife species. Classroom teachers, preservice teachers, and families will discover straightforward instructions, few materials or background knowledge required, and a format that is easily adaptable to the e-learning environment.

Wild edible, medicinal and poisonous plants are an ideal way to connect students to the natural world just outside their door. In this unit, students will be able to identify edible, medicinal and poisonous plants using guide books and plotting them on the Siftr app. Using the collected edibles, students will then follow a procedural text to create food from their wild edibles. Students will then create recipes on their own based on a wild edible of their choice to create community cookbooks.

Through this interactive, hands-on lesson, students will read and gain an understanding of Aldo Leopold’s essay, “Come High Water”. This lesson is best taught in April or around Earth Day when students may be doing a trash cleanup project. If students are cleaning up or exploring near a river, even better!

This template is to be used in the Connect, Explore, Engage professional learning series. Sign into WISELearn to create your own copy of this resource and update the template and this abstract.

Students will research the life cycle, characteristics, and behavior of the Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis). They will regularly monitor Eastern Bluebird nestboxes and collect data using the Siftr app and may choose to report the data to BRAW (Bluebird Restoration Association of Wisconsin). The data and observations can be used in various ongoing inquiry and research activities.

This resource is an action plan that includes inquiry, exploratory activities, discussion, and application. It is intended to familiarize preservice teachers with the three interconnected strands of the Wisconsin Standards for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability including: Connect, Explore, and Engage. This plan will allow preservice teachers to identify and integrate the standards associated with Connect, Explore, and Engage and implement the standards.

This template is to be used in the Connect, Explore, Engage professional learning series. Sign into WISELearn to create your own copy of this resource and update the template and this abstract.

Students will read and discuss the legends of three inseparable sisters, corn, bean, and squash, who only grow and thrive together. This relates to the tradition of interplanting corn, beans, and squash in the same mounds, which is widespread among Native American farming societies. It is a sustainable system that provided long-term soil fertility and a healthy diet for generations. The students will also develop an understanding of symbiotic relationships found between organisms living in the same ecosystems.

Phenology is the study of seasonal and cyclical changes in nature. In this Unit, students will follow in the footsteps of Aldo Leopold and his children by closely observing the natural world around them, connecting those observations to the seasonal changes in their landscape, and developing an appreciation for the dedication of scientists like Leopold. They will Connect, Explore, and Engage with nature through poetry writing, technology-assisted exploration, and phenological observations.

John Muir is known as the father of our National Parks. His boyhood was spent in Marquette County, Wisconsin where he found inspiration in the wilderness around him. In this Unit, students will learn about John Muir’s boyhood neighborhood and actively work to preserve it, connect with Muir’s many accomplishments, understand different environmental philosophies, and saunter in nature while observing and reflecting on the world around them. Students will Connect, Explore, and Engage through intentional time in nature, reflective writing, reading inspirational passages by Muir, and using technology to document changes over time.

Using a weekly assessment to link environmental studies content to an ELS standard.

This activity uses the reading, A Cool Connection (as a short story or one act play), to increase student understanding of how electrical power gets to their home and to introduce the connections between environmental problems and personal consumption. The storyline revolves around a group of high school students seeking relief from a heatwave while planning activities for their Ecology Club.

Topics introduced and assessed:
• The steps needed to move electrical power from where it is produced to where it is consumed
• The environmental costs of energy production
• The social costs of not meeting electrical demand

This template is to be used in the Connect, Explore, Engage professional learning series. Sign into WISELearn to create your own copy of this resource and update the template and this abstract.

"How to Teach Nature Journaling" by John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren (2020) is a free PDF curriculum guide to support educators as they model and teach science thinking by keeping a nature journal. The benefits of nature journaling are that it helps students to:
• slow down and pay attention
• wonder and ask questions
• supporting creativity and critical thinking skills
• by seeing themselves as scientists, engaging in authentic science inquiry
• nurturing a connection with nature
• building equity”
(p. 7 of How to Teach Nature Journaling by Law and Muir, 2020)

This inquiry is designed for supporting students' independent exploration of water outdoors as well as the use of computer interactives. 

Through this interactive, hands-on lesson, students will read and gain an understanding of Aldo Leopold’s essay, “January Thaw”. This lesson is best taught in January and/or when animal tracks are present outside.

In this series of activities, students build their background knowledge about bats through a variety of media and texts (Activity 1), play games to learn more about how bats interact with their prey and how they use their bodies, and choose an action(s) to help make the world a better place for bats, and therefore, humans (Activity 2). My students decided to create educational posters convincing people to help bats, plant a bat garden, build a bat house, and adopt-a-bat. They also wrote persuasive letters to hang the bat house on our school, which they presented to the administration (and the project was approved - in addition to which the principal asked us to create additional educational materials to teach the school community - teachers, students, other staff - and families about the benefits of bats).

Students will use hands-on models, maps, and the natural landscape to describe landforms in our area and and develop and understanding of the effects of water and wind on these landforms. Prior to these lessons, students will have had experiences with the use of "I Notice, I Wonder, It Reminds Me Of" protocols as well as field journaling. This is a unit for second grade landforms that culminates in a visit to Roche-A-Cri State Park.

This lesson uses the an inquiry-based approach to learning modified from the BEETLES Learning Cycle to explore wind and wind energy. 

This resource provides an overview of how the Northland College Educator Preparation Program will systematically integrate Environmental Sustainability across our program in order to prepare education students to more intentionally incorporate the Wisconsin Environmental Literacy and Sustainability (ELS) standards into their teaching practice.

This template uses the an inquiry-based approach to learning modified from the BEETLES Learning Cycle. 

This resource provides a class activity based on a “Town Hall Meeting” discussion/debate on resource extraction using sand mining in Wisconsin as a case study. The activity is designed for a lower-level university course. The objective is to engage students in a lively discussion of different perspectives on the significance of resource extraction held by various stakeholder groups in Wisconsin. It is based on stakeholders within Trempealeau County, but many are also found elsewhere and could readily be adapted to any location within the state. Students divide into representative groups, work collaboratively to explore the diversity of perspectives, and present these during an online synchronous meeting.

 Over the course of the semester students will create, maintain, and compare a nature journal and digital science notebook.  The intent of this activity is for them to become familiar with how journals/notebooks can be used by learners to facilitate scientific inquiry endeavors from both nature-based and technology-based perspectives.

This template is to be used by participants attending the TENFEE (Teacher Educators Network for Environmental Education) professional learning summit. Sign into WISELearn to create your own copy of this resource and update the template and this abstract.

This template is to be used by participants attending the TENFEE (Teacher Educators Network for Environmental Education) professional learning summit. Sign into WISELearn to create your own copy of this resource and update the template and this abstract.

This resource is intended to engage undergraduate students in non-science majors by their participation in a citizen-science project.

This is a resource that describes the action plan since attending the TENFEE workshops to learn about and apply the Environmental Literacy and Sustainability Standards in a Teacher Education Program in Wisconsin.

We developed an interdisciplinary lesson to help students investigate the structure and function of leaf sizes at the top and bottom of a tree. This lesson could be used with fourth-grade students as well as elementary teacher candidates to model how to get children outdoors to learn.

Through this experience, preservice teachers will learn about and experience the benefits of nature journaling, supports for beginning nature journaling, and how to successfully take children outdoors to learn.

This is a description of implementing an EE Learning Cycle for Pre-service teachers. It also includes the assignment for Pre-service teachers to implement in the field.

Introducing and modeling use of inquiry-based learning strategies and the Wisconsin Standards for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability, this plan takes place over the course of three 110-minute class meetings.

This unit helps students explore the role green spaces play in personal well being through observation, writing, community engagement, and shared mapping technology.

This nature journaling unit is intended for use in an upper division early childhood education science and environment methods course; and will occur in three steps, likely during three consecutive class periods. The intention of this learning sequence is to prepare early childhood pre-service educators to implement nature journaling experiences in order to facilitate emergent cycles of inquiry that will extend theory build and wonder in young children. First the pre-service educators will learn about nature journaling, how to engage with the practice themselves, and how to facilitate nature journaling with young children. Then, through a series of nature journaling practice activities, the pre-service educators will engage in their own nature journaling practice as it connects to the broader early childhood science question of ecological perspective taking and participation with nature. Finally, they will explore how to facilitate and observe children’s nature journaling practice, and how to utilize the questions that emerge from this recurrent practice in cycles of inquiry planning.

Through this unit, students will learn about a conservation issue that is important to them through active research. They will also improve public speaking skills through the delivery of a speech.

In this lesson, students will learn about the process of classifying and naming plants including common and scientific names.

In this lesson, students will learn about the process of classifying and naming plants including common and scientific names.

Students learn to identify places where rain soaks into the ground or runs off into a sewer system and describe the impact this has on the natural system.