5 Ways to Bring Environmental Science Into Your Classroom!
Environmental science is a diverse discipline that cuts across many grades and subjects such as language arts, social studies and math — with the opportunity to learn about topics in energy, climate change and green economy. And GreenLearning has simple and hands-on resources that could be used to introduce the issues to students while connecting it to their lives in meaningful and practical ways. Most of all, the resources are all FREE and accessible online.
GreenLearning’s challenges are not your ordinary class activity! They are a unique opportunity for youth to engage in deeper environmental action and impact. Each challenge allows youth to create an impact that they can track and share! They come with ready-made collections of background information and curriculum linked learning resources for grades 3-12 in a variety of subjects.
Here are some suggestions on how to bring environmental science alive in your classroom based on GreenLearning’s fun and easy challenges.
Empower Youth Voices on Climate Change Policy
Grades: 9-12
Want to engage students in deeper climate action? The objective of the Decoding Carbon Challenge is to explore and create a climate policy for Canada. In this challenge, students will discover how policy is used to build a low carbon future and the activities will empower youth to become informed and active citizens for tackling climate change.
Get Hands-On with Learning about Renewable Energy
Grades 4-12
Turn youth into energy engineers in the Re-Energy Challenge! Keep your students engaged with the challenge to design, build and test the working model of a renewable energy technology! Choose from seven options to construct an electric vehicle, penny battery, flywheel model, solar oven, wind turbine, hydro generator or biogas generator. Be sure to check out our most popular activity — the Build a Solar Oven activity in which students bake tasty treats under solar heat while learning about solar energy.
Prepare Your School for Extreme Weather
Grades 4-12
With the rise in frequent and severe rainfall comes the issue of flooding in our communities. GreenLearning has a program on preparing for extreme weather with a take action component called the Flood:Ed Challenge that helps students understand the science of flooding and invites them to develop a flood resiliency plan for their school.
Turn Youth into Home Energy Experts
Grades 4-12
Take action to reduce energy consumption at home in the Home Energy Audit Challenge! This is part of the Energy Revealed program, which helps students learn about energy conservation. The Energy Audit Challenge teaches students to be energy conscious at home by making small retrofits and adopting behaviour changes towards using energy a little more wisely.
Track the Impact of a School Earth Hour
Grades 3-12
Thinking about a lights out event for Earth Hour? Well, the School Earth Hour Challenge will help your students host and track the impact of your school’s Earth Hour activities! It is also a chance for youth to learn about energy consumption and conservation at school.
Rewards and Recognition
The challenges would not be complete if there were no prizes up for grabs! GreenLearning is awarding a prize of up to $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place and $250 for third place in each challenge category. The winners will also be featured on the website in a showcase and receive a digital certificate in addition to adding their results to the national GreenLearning impact centre.
Getting started is easy! Register to participate in a challenge of your choice and we will contact you with a confirmation! Once you register, you will receive a challenge package along with support from experienced educators.
To register, simply click here.