Earth Day is Monday April 22. It’s a day for everyone to focus on the environment, conservation and clearing up pollution. There are many ways lessons from Earth Day can be incorporated in the classroom and those lessons go beyond earth science. Check out these lessons from PBS Learning Media - make sure you login.

PBS Learning Media
Math

Unit Conversion: Water Use Grades 5-8

In this blended lesson supporting literacy skills, students watch videos and complete interactive activities to learn how much water various activities use and explore ways that they can conserve water resources. Students develop their literacy skills as they explore a mathematics focus on using fractions to convert units of measurement. During this process, they read informational text, learn and practice vocabulary words, and explore content through videos and interactive activities.

Health Science:

Nowhere to Hide Grades K-8

This interactive activity from Kinetic City illustrates how environmental change affects the process of natural selection. A quickly changing environment can put an organism in a vulnerable position and present an evolutionary disadvantage. In this game, you control the amount of pollution produced by a nearby factory. Observe how the pollution affects the trees and the populations of different colored bugs that live in the trees.

Social Studies:

Taking Root Classroom Module Grades 9-12

Students will examine how Kenya’s history as a colonized nation has contributed to their challenges with deforestation. Historical footage documents the extensive clearing of the land, and the displacement of the tribes and tribal life, which took place during the period of British colonialism beginning in the 1880s. They will also learn that the clearing of forested land continued when Kenya returned to self-rule beginning in 1963. Students will then identify how this environmental degradation is related to other social, political and economic problems that affect the country’s marginalized citizens.

Earth Science:

Waste Deep Grades 7-13+

Enhance your health, science, and environmental studies curriculum with this video which features a landfill in South Jersey and examines the state of food waste in America today. Then, use the accompanying lesson plan, "Making Mountains Out of Landfills: Telling a Visual Story of Waste."