Even though students may be very familiar with trees, they may not have thought much about the actual structure of a tree. In this activity, your students will go outdoors or view pictures to take a closer look at trees and their parts.
To get this activity, purchase it from Shop.PLT.org as part of the Sensational Trees activity collection and/or find out about professional development opportunities in your state.
Below are some supporting resources for this activity.
Download the copyright-free student pages that are included with this activity:
Seeing a Tree (PDF)
Spanish Student Page(s):
Ver un árbol (PDF)
Expand your students’ learning and imaginations. Help students meet their reading goals, while building upon concepts learned in this activity, with the following children’s book recommendations:
Try a simple variation of this activity to engage children in the outdoors at home. Download this fun and easy-to-do family activity.
The following tools and resources may be used to enhance the activity.
The Minnesota Department of Education includes Indigenous-based learning benchmarks in science, language arts, and social studies. Learn how the Minnesota DNR worked with tribes to adapt several PLT activities to include Ojibwe and Dakota culture and knowledge, and get some tips for teaching about Indigenous Peoples with knowledge and respect. Access the Ojibwe and Dakota PLT Lessons that connect students in grades K-8 to forests using Indigenous knowledge and perspectives.
Google Slides and Docs are great tools for facilitating remote learning and student collaboration. They can be integrated into Google Classroom or other e-learning platforms. Check The Closer You Look for our remote-ready educator instructions and student pages.
Please note: Resources are available as view only and require that you make a copy to your own Drive in order to edit and share with your students. To learn how, watch this demo.
Download “The Closer You Look” NGSS Correlations which includes a guiding question, science connections found in the activity, and explicit NGSS correlations. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) define what students should know or be able to do at the end of instruction. This activity provides students opportunities to explore the three dimensions of science to build knowledge and understanding. In addition, activities offer phenomenon-based learning, which involves exploring the real world through learner-centered, multidisciplinary investigations that promote inquiry and problem solving. It is a useful resource even if your state has not adopted NGSS.
Watch The Closer You Look Demonstration video (11 minutes). PLT’s The Closer You Look helps students learn about trees and tree parts. This video was developed by Danielle Ardrey, Colorado PLT Coordinator, this step-by-step instructional video offers guiding questions and examples of tree drawings.
Learn about tree Identification in this “BeLEAF it or Not” video How To Identify Trees. Michigan foresters, Bill Cook and Georgia Peterson explain some identification characteristics of trees, such as bark, buds, fruits, and leaves. They also explain the Latin/two-part scientific names for living things that allow people throughout the world to communicate unambiguously about species. Intended for students in grades four through seven, the episode has an accompanying resource page.
The science of tree rings is called dendrochronology. Tree rings help scientists learn about past climates by decoding tree ring patterns. Climate scientists use clues from ice cores, layered sediment deposits in lakes and seas, the structure of coral reefs, as well as tree ring sequences to learn about paleoclimates. The use of tree ring records to decode Earth’s climate history is called dendroclimatology. Use this interactive Tree Rings Simulation by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Center for Science Education to learn what tree ring patterns can tell us about climate conditions in the past.
Leafsnap is a free app that uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from leaf photographs you take in the field. Leafsnap currently focuses on tree species found in the Northeastern United States and Canada, but expansion is underway to include all U.S. regions.
AllTrails is a free app that helps users discover the outdoors. Use it to find a hiking path suitable for children, to search for local places to bike or fish, or to plan a national park visit.
A program of the Ad Council and U.S. Forest Service, Discover the Forest offers resources that help families discover nearby forests and provides tips on how to prepare for and enjoy outdoor adventures.
Help students visualize the inner layers of a tree trunk and better understand the function of its different parts by creating this easy-to-make visual aid – a cross-section of a tree trunk.
Check out this video, which captures 15 months of a forest’s life. This 3-minute time lapse video was created from 40,000 photographs. Photographer Samuel Orr took pictures out of the same window in his home to create this forest montage. This forest snapshot is just outside of Bloomington, Indiana and was photographed between 2006 and 2008.
Dr. Don Leopold, State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry professor, has identified a total of 135 tree species on YouTube. These 2-minute, high definition videos briefly summarize how to identify each tree species, its ecological characteristics and importance, and communicate fun facts. While the list of native and non-native tree species is familiar to Northeastern landscapes, many western U.S. tree species are also covered. These vignettes are also all available for free on i-Tunes.
This informational handout, made available by Montana State University Extension Forestry, describes forest soil profiles, functions, and the effects that natural and manmade impacts can have on overall forest health.
Life: Magnified was an exhibit of scientific images showing cells and other scenes of life magnified by as much as 50,000 times. The exhibit was on display at Washington Dulles International Airport’s Gateway Gallery from June 2014 through January 2015. The supporting Life: Magnified website features high-resolution version of all 46 images in the collection along with longer captions than in the airport exhibit. In this online gallery, you’ll see cells from all around the body–brain, blood, eyed, skin, liver, muscle. Each type of cell teaches different lessons about how life works.
Using Scratch, educators of all ages and levels can program interactive stories, games, and animations and share their creations in an online community. Click on For Educators to access tips and resources for using Scratch in the classroom, including an introductory video, how-to tutorials, and a webinar. Teachers can also join the ScratchEd community to connect and collaborate with other educators using Scratch.
Are you looking for new literature connections to support your favorite PLT lessons? This growing Epic! online library offers thousands of picture books, chapter books, early readers, and even nonfiction books (think Common Core Connections!) that elementary teachers can access free of cost. Registered users receive unlimited access to books and customized recommendations for readers’ age levels and interests. Epic! is available for iPads, iPhones, and Android devices.
When temperatures drop and days get shorter, trees start to prepare for the cold of the winter. How do different kinds of trees adapt to the cold? Take a closer look at trees and get children to investigate the seasonal changes!
We’ve assembled a list of our top eight Project Learning Tree activities perfect for social distancing kids in Kindergarten through Grade 8.
Explore PLT resources to help you teach students about the environment, whether you’re new to teaching or looking for new environmental education resources to explore! PLT provides easy-to-teach, hands-on activities suitable for various settings, and a range of resources to support and mentor new educators.
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