Finding and eradicating invasive plants is a tough job that requires constant vigilance. County-scale maps that show where invasive plants are and where they have the potential to spread in the future are helping on-the-ground efforts to build the resilience of natural vegetation.

Students are introduced to the work of botanists and botanical illustrators, and specifically to their race to make records of endangered plant species around the world. Students examine illustrations, photographs, and dried specimens of endangered plants and consider the conservation value of an illustration over a photographic image. In a second session, students try their own hands at botanical illustration and follow the methods of a Smithsonian staff illustrator. Pencils, markers, tracing paper, and access to a photocopier are required.

The goal of the Listening and Learning Strand is for students to acquire language competence through listening, specifically building a rich vocabulary, and broad knowledge in history and science by being exposed to carefully selected, sequenced, and coherent read_alouds. The 9 units (or domains) provide lessons (including images and texts), as well as instructional objectives, core vocabulary, and assessment materials. The domain topics include: Nursery Rhymes and Fables; Five Senses; Stories; Plants; Farms; Kings and Queens; Seasons and Weather; Colonial Towns; and Taking Care of the Earth.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

In this lesson, students find their location on a map using Latitude and Longitudinal coordinates. They determine where they should go to be rescued and how best to get there.

This list of carefully selected books for grades K-5 highlights nonfiction about climate proxies, those preserved physical characteristics, such as fossils, that scientists use to reconstruct past climates. Also highlighted are a few books that provide information about two past climatic events -- the last ice age and the Dust Bowl. In each issue of the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, the virtual bookshelf recommends books that accurately portray the theme drawn from the principles of climate sciences.

Students learn how rooftop gardens help the environment and the lives of people, especially in urban areas. They gain an understanding of how plants reduce the urban heat island effect, improve air quality, provide agriculture space, reduce energy consumption and increase the aesthetic quality of cities. This draws upon the science of heat transfer (conduction, convection, radiation, materials, color) and ecology (plants, shade, carbon dioxide, photosynthesis), and the engineering requirements for rooftop gardens. In the associated activity, students apply their scientific knowledge to model and measure the effects of green roofs.

This activity is a field investigation where students gather information before and after learning about plants, which will allow you to compare the knowledge the previously know and have acquired through your teaching.

In this activity, the students will investigate a variety of plants and animals common to the Amazon through research. They will determine the plant or animal characteristics that make them edible or useful for the trip and learn to categorize them by comparing similarities and/or differences.

This lesson will ask students to think themselves as 'joy' dispersers, likening themselves to the different ways that seeds are dispersed. They will model both and reflect on how they 'spread' joy. One of the pursuits the people in these black literary societies worked towards was intellectualism. This means that they learn something but what they learned doesn't just sit there. It is used to change things, to see things differently or to get to know others and themselves. Another pursuit was joy. In this lesson, they will discuss how to spread joy from one person to the next so it will grow.

Corn is one of the best crops for producing biomass for fossil fuels, however it is an annual and needs very fertile soil. To grow corn, farmers add a lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to their fields. Other crops, like switchgrass, prairie, poplar trees, and Miscanthus grass are perennials and require fewer fertilizers and pesticides to grow. If perennials can produce high levels of biomass with low inputs, perhaps they could produce more biomass than corn under certain low nutrient conditions.

This resource was evaluated using the HQIM rubric - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XTrjQnltiJHNepi28JGFMjAeYRkHV6p4IuRNaSZ1YQQ/edit?usp=sharing

In this lesson, the students will investigate what types of plants and insects they could eat to survive in the Amazon. They will research various plants and/or insects and identify characteristics that make them edible or useful for the trip. The students will create posters and present their findings to the class.

This lesson is an introduction to a unit on habitat. It is designed to combine literature and science.

This activity is an investigation to determine the effect of soil type on plant growth. The students will develop an understanding of the plant as producer.

In this activity, the students will use wax paper shaped as leaves and kite string to build a shelter to protect them from the rain. The students will then test the shelters for durability and water resistance.

This activity is designed for students to discover how making observations of the environment is the key to making sound predictions. Students will also learn how both positive and negative outcomes of these predictions can affect and shape future decisions.

This activity is an inquiry and field study based. Students will be trying to observe, document, compare, contrast, and communicate what information they were able to gather. The will use this information to make in inference about the organisms they have found and classify them as either an insect or not an insect.

This link has a teacher guide, 3 student graphing activity sheets, rubric and a complete description of the activities related to climate change and invasive species.

The Invasive Plants Association of Wisconsin (IPAW) is a nonprofit membership-based organization whose mission is to promote better stewardship of the natural resources of Wisconsin by advancing the understanding of invasive plants, preventing their introduction, and encouraging the control of their spread.

IPAW defines an invasive plant as one that invades native plant communities and impacts those native communities by displacing or replacing native vegetation.

Both a weed and an invasive plant are plants out of place, but an invasive plant encroaches into forests, roadsides, and prairies where it is unchecked by the devotions of an obsessive backyard gardener. The ramifications of invasive plants are so much more ominous than that of weeds because they can and do destroy the natural diversity of native vegetation.

Ironically, many invasive plants get their foothold through well-meaning gardeners who introduce the species as a lovely accent to their patch of paradise. However, many of these plants come from foreign lands and do not have the natural controls that a native plant has. Soon the nonnative plant takes over – first the garden and then, by propagating via the wind, through deep-set runners and by the cooperation of willing birds carrying the seeds, more distant places.

There are many plants that are invasive in Wisconsin. To ease you into an awareness of invasive plants without overwhelming you, IPAW has developed this list of Wisconsin’s Worst foreign invaders.

Students will observe simple plants, develop an investigable question, and form an investigation. They will document their investigation in their science notebooks.

This activity is a guided inquiry investigation where students gather data on which soil is the best for growing plants. Student will interpret their data, and develop a conclusion from the data. The student will determine which type of soil they would like to use in the next activity of making their own terrariums. The data collected could lead to further questions, which can be investigated in some extension activities.