Ways to Give Back to Your Community on Martin Luther King, Jr., National Day of Service

Posted on January 9, 2024February 7, 2024 by Jackie Stallard

Did you know that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is the only federal holiday designated as a National Day of Service? On January 15, 2024, we can volunteer as a way not only to honor the legacy of Dr. King but also to come together to improve our communities.

There are many ways, big and small, to give back.

Here are some service projects you can do with the youth in your life. Some of these activities may require coordination with others in your community or school.

10 Community Service Project Ideas

1. Plant a tree. Trees are invaluable assets to our communities, providing shade, cooling streets and buildings, providing homes for animals, and contributing to a community’s sense of place. Be sure to research which trees are best to plant in your area.

2. Become a Green Ribbon School. The U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools initiative recognizes schools for their sustainability efforts. Learn more about what it takes to become recognized and how PLT’s GreenSchools resources can help your school become greener and healthier!

3. Achieve Tree Campus K-12 Recognition. PLT partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation to provide curriculum resources that support schools interested in achieving Tree Campus K-12 recognition. Learn more about how your school can get involved.

4. Organize a litter cleanup. Pick up trash around your school, neighborhood, park, or shopping center. Grab a trash bag, some gloves, and head outdoors to clean up litter. This is a great teaching opportunity about the importance of putting trash and recyclables into proper receptacles. Not only does trash pollute waterways, forests, and our communities, but many animals think those tiny pieces of plastic or foil are pieces of food.

5. Plant a school or community garden. Gardens are a wonderful way to attract amazing pollinators – bees, birds, bats, and butterflies! Plus, if you plant a vegetable garden, you can share the fruits (or veggies in this case) of your labor with a local food bank.

6. Start a recycling program at your school. If you don’t yet have one, now is the perfect time to start a recycling program on campus. Teach students how they can reduce their waste with the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle activity from the Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide.

7. Make greeting cards out of homemade paper. You can send them to your family and friends, or even deliver kind messages to residents at a senior living center. Check out the Make Your Own Paper activity from the Explore Your Environment guide.

8. Design and paint a nature-themed mural at your school. For those cold, wintery days when children are cooped up indoors, design a nature mural that all can enjoy. Get creative and channel your inner artist!

9. Coordinate a food drive to donate to a local food bank. Contact your local food bank to see what items they need most. Many need non-perishable food items like canned food or monetary donations.

10. Help remove invasive species around your school or community. If you live close to a national park, many of them have volunteer opportunities on MLK Day to remove invasive species. Learn more about invasive species and what you can do to help.

Other Ways to Get Involved

Be sure to look for volunteer opportunities through your local parks and recreation department, at state or national parks, and other community-based organizations.

Americorps: https://americorps.gov/serve/volunteer/mlk-day

Points of Light: https://engage.pointsoflight.org/

Youth Service America: https://ysa.org/campaigns/mlkday/

Idealist: https://www.idealist.org/en/volunteer?actionType=VOLOP&q=mlk

National Park Service: https://www.volunteer.gov/s/global-search/FILTERNPS

New PLT Activity Collections: Nature of Fire for Grades 6-8

Posted on September 20, 2021October 11, 2021 by Jackie Stallard

Project Learning Tree recently launched a new series of theme-based activity collections that focus on specific grade levels and relevant topics.

Nature of Fire is our latest release that features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 6-8 that invite learners to investigate wildfire and ecosystem change.

The activity collection is available for purchase from PLT’s Shop as a downloadable PDF for $5.99.

Other PLT Activity Collections include:

Fire: Friend or Foe?

Ecosystems are constantly changing. They may change slowly over time, through processes such as succession, in which plant species are replaced by other species. They may also change more rapidly through a disturbance such as fire.

In many ecosystems, fire is a natural change agent that can bring positive changes. It can open up the forest canopy to more sunlight, recycle nutrients in the soil or help some plants regenerate.

However, as the human population expands into wildland areas, wildfire is an increasing threat to people and structures, putting public safety at risk. Decades of fire suppression have caused a build-up of fuel in some ecosystems, which can lead to more intense, devastating fires. In addition, the changing climate is intensifying fire risk with reduced precipitation, warmer temperatures, and stronger winds that can dry out trees and stoke flames. Uncontrolled wildfire can also negatively impact human health, public safety, water quality, species habitat and increases carbon emissions.

Sustainable Forest Management

Raising the awareness of fire management and the risk of wildfires, as well as the undesirable effects of fire such as the impact on carbon emissions, water quality, species habitat, human health and public safety, are considered critical in sustainable forest management. Management techniques to limit the undesirable impacts of wildfire include prescribed burning, stand thinning, or other treatments to reduce the levels of hazardous fuels.

Fire management is a key part of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Forest Management Standard. The new SFI Fire Resilience and Awareness Objective requires SFI-certified organizations to limit susceptibility of forests to undesirable impacts of wildfire and to raise community awareness of fire benefits, risks, and minimization measures. For more detailed information, see the SFI 2022 Standards and Rules.

Sustainable forest management includes strategies to reduce catastrophic wildfire, ensure resilient forests, maintain forests, and restore degraded lands. Resilient forests are necessary to confront today’s challenging environmental issues, including wildfire and climate change.

Nature of Fire: Grades 6-8 Activities

Nature of Fire features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 6-8. Designed to be flexible, the activities can be used as individual, stand-alone lessons, or all together as a cohesive unit of instruction using a storyline technique.

Nothing Succeeds Like Succession

Students read a story about forest succession and investigate the connections between plants, animals, and successional stages in a local ecosystem.
Living with Fire

Students learn about the three elements that a fire needs to burn and find out how this “fire triangle” can be used to prevent and manage wildland fires.

Burning Issues

Students graph changes in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) over the course of several decades to explore the relationship between CO₂, the Earth’s climate, and wildfires ⁠— and suggest ways to reduce the negative effects of fire.

Learning Progressions

Storylines provide connectedness and continuity to individual activities and can serve as the instructional “glue” that holds areas of knowledge and skills together. The activities in Nature of Fire may be linked together into a unit of instruction using a storyline technique, such as the one that follows.

Guiding Question: How is wildland fire both a cause and effect of ecosystem change?

Storyline: Students investigate the role of fire in ecosystem change.

The sequence of individual activities supports this storyline:

Beginning with “Nothing Succeeds Like Succession,” introduce the concept that forests and other ecosystems are in a constant state of change. Succession is a pattern of change that takes place over time, while fire and other disturbances can bring more immediate changes.
Use “Living with Fire” to explore the elements needed for a fire to burn—the “fire triangle”—which also can be used to prevent and manage wildland fires. Use the Wildfire Safety Checklist for students to assess wildfire safety on-site or at home.
Conclude with “Burning Issues,” which invites students to examine the relationship among rising CO₂ levels, global temperatures, and the extent of wildland fires, and to draw conclusions based on evidence. Culminate the storyline by encouraging students to identify ways to reduce the effects they have identified.

New Features Within Each Activity

In addition to the typical elements that educators have come to rely on from PLT, the following new features in our theme-based series will further help educators adapt the activities for specific groups and settings.

Academic Standards

Classroom educators and nonformal educators alike need to ensure that instruction helps diverse learners meet rigorous academic benchmarks. Each PLT activity displays explicit connections to practices and concepts mandated by the following national academic standards. Here is an example from “Nothing Succeeds Like Succession.”

Take It Outside!

Describes how to extend student learning into the outdoors.

Differentiated Instruction Strategies

- - Cooperative Learning
  - ELA Skills
  - Hands-On Learning
  - Higher-Order Thinking
  - Multiple Solution Pathways
  - Nonlinguistic Representations
  - Personal Connections
  - Student Voice

Did You Know?

Forest Facts present interesting insights into forests as global solutions for environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

Career Corner

Introduces youth to forest-related careers.

Purchase Nature of Fire now from PLT’s Shop for $5.99.

New PLT Activity Collections: Trillions of Trees for Grades 3-5

Posted on August 13, 2021October 11, 2021 by Jackie Stallard

Project Learning Tree recently launched a new series of theme-based activity collections that focus on specific grade levels and topics.

Trillions of Trees is our latest release featuring three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 3-5. The series invites learners to investigate the unique characteristics of different tree species and discover how best to plan, plant, and care for trees in their community.

The activity collection is available for purchase from PLT’s Shop as a downloadable PDF for $5.95.

Other PLT Activity Collections include:

Why Trillions of Trees?

There are approximately three trillion trees on Earth. Trees are invaluable assets to people and the environment. Climate change is one of our most pressing global challenges and everyone has the power to help be a part of the solution by planting trees and making sure they mature with proper care.

This Activity Collection will help your group plant the right tree in the right place and for the right reason. Students will learn to identify trees as a first step to selecting a tree that will perform well at their site. The activities will also help your group plan for continued maintenance and care, which is critical for the success of any tree planting project.

The United Nations (UN) has declared a Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). In this decade, targeted initiatives to restore forests and other ecosystems across the globe will support economic resiliency, protect soils and watersheds, improve wildlife habitat, better confront a changing climate, and create a more sustainable future.

The initiative is a rallying call to work toward the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, an international blueprint to achieve a more sustainable future for the world by 2030. The Decade of Ecosystem Restoration includes restoration through tree planting and maintenance and thousands of on-the-ground projects to help meet those global goals.

Trillions of Trees: Grades 3-5 Activities

Trillions of Trees features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 3-5. Designed to be flexible, the activities can be used as individual, stand-alone lessons, or all together as a cohesive unit of instruction using a storyline technique.

1. Tree ID
Students learn about the identifying features of trees, including their leaves, bark, twigs, flowers, fruit, and seeds.

2. Trees in Trouble
Students examine trees for signs of damage or poor health and investigate conditions for maintaining trees and other plants.

3. Plant a Tree
Students plan and carry out their own tree-planting project.

Learning Progressions

Storylines provide connectedness and continuity to individual activities and can serve as the instructional glue that holds areas of knowledge and skills together. The activities in Trillions of Trees may be linked together into a unit of instruction using a storyline technique, such as the one that follows.

Guiding Question: How do we identify what trees to plant and where to plant them?

Storyline: Students investigate the identifying features of different trees and use their understanding of trees to plan, plant, and care for trees in their community.

The sequence of individual activities supports this storyline:

Beginning with “Tree ID,” introduce students to some of the identifying characteristics of trees and challenge them to identify different trees through these characteristics. Point out that identifying trees helps people to determine the most suitable tree species to plant on a certain site and to determine the best care for trees.
Use “Trees in Trouble” to explore the conditions for healthy tree growth. In this activity, students begin to recognize symptoms and possible causes of poor health and also investigate the effects of different growing conditions.
Conclude with “Plant a Tree,” which invites students to plan and plant a tree at their site or in their community. Encourage students to consider the growing conditions of the proposed planting location to determine the best tree species and care plan to ensure tree health.

New Features Within Each Activity

Academic Standards
Classroom educators and nonformal educators alike need to ensure that instruction helps diverse learners meet rigorous academic benchmarks. Each PLT activity displays explicit connections to practices and concepts mandated by the following national academic standards. Here is an example from “Trees in Trouble.”

Take It Outside!

Describes how to extend student learning into the outdoors.

Differentiated Instruction Strategies

- - Cooperative Learning
  - ELA Skills
  - Hands-On Learning
  - Higher-Order Thinking
  - Multiple Solution Pathways
  - Nonlinguistic Representations
  - Personal Connections
  - Student Voice

Did You Know?

Forest Facts present interesting insights into forests as global solutions for environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

Career Corner

Introduces youth to forest-related careers.

Purchase Trillions of Trees now from PLT’s Shop for $5.95.

Forest Literacy Framework: Another Tool to Connect with Trees

Posted on July 8, 2021September 29, 2023 by Jackie Stallard

Project Learning Tree’s new Forest Literacy Framework translates the complex language of forests, trees, forest practices, and sustainable forest management into concepts that everyone should know by the time they graduate from high school. It is designed to increase people’s understanding of forests and empower them to take actions that benefit forests and people.

Forests and our shared future

Our collective future will depend on people better understanding the values and benefits of forests because they are so important to solving global challenges. Forests mitigate climate change by capturing carbon from the atmosphere and wood products from forests store carbon. Forests help conserve species at risk by providing habitat. Forests also purify air and water and reduce the threat of droughts and floods.

Forests are renewable. They are reliable, regenerative, and restorative. Forests sustain communities and economies by supporting diverse career opportunities and driving economic activity. Providing recreational spaces and sustaining traditional resource uses and places for spiritual renewal are yet other areas where forests play an outsized role.

PLT’s Forest Literacy Framework (or FLF) distills this essential knowledge into age-appropriate core concepts that can be applied in formal or informal settings. It benefits youth, educators, and communities large and small.

The Forest Literacy Framework was jointly developed by PLT and PLT Canada, with partial funding from the USDA Forest Service. Input from a 16-person Advisory Panel represented a wide spectrum of stakeholder engagement and ensured content accuracy, age-level appropriateness, and bi-national continuity. PLT’s Forest Literacy Framework is a natural extension of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute’s Forest Literacy Plan, which developed the concept.

Three Options to Engage

The Forest Literacy Framework offers three options for starting your forest literary journey. Download the complete Forest Literacy Framework or connect to each section by grade level, hot topic, and theme below. Have a look to decide which way(s) work best for you:

1.) Start with an engaging question

To use this approach, focus on pages 8–17 or go to the section on Themes at www.plt.org/forestliteracy, where you will see Forest Literacy Framework concepts organized by four overarching themes:

Theme 1: What Is a Forest?
Theme 2: Why Do Forests Matter?
Theme 3: How Do We Sustain Our Forests?
Theme 4: What is Our Responsibility to Forests?

These questions can be used as engaging phenomena to connect students to learning in meaningful ways. Leading with phenomena directly connects instruction to learners’ homes, communities, and cultures, thus making teaching and learning more diverse, inclusive, and relevant. Once you’ve chosen the theme you want to focus on, visit that section in the FLF to dive deeper into sub-themes and concepts to explore.

2.) Start with an age or grade level

To leverage this approach, visit pages 20–35 or select the age and grade level of your learners at www.plt.org/forestliteracy. This section of the resource explores forest concepts and topics that are most appropriate for the grades/ages with whom you work.

While this section is organized by grade level, it is important to recognize that these lines are not hard and fast. Learning represents a continuum, and you always have options to differentiate instruction for your target audience.

The grade-level sections provide guiding questions to help construct teaching and learning about trees and forests. Other resources in this section include connections to subject areas, topics, core ideas, and academic standards; age-appropriate, hands-on examples; and real-world connections to community programs or other resources.

3.) Start with a current event or hot topic

Last but not least, pages 36–40 of the framework address forest concepts by “hot topic.” You can also connect directly to the Hot Topics section at www.plt.org/forestliteracy.

We have five topics available now:

Urban Forests
Climate Change
Green Jobs
Wildfire
Public Health

Once you’ve selected the topic, you’ll be guided by concept and grade level to use the topic as a hook to forest concepts. A sixth topic, Indigenous Connection To Land, is under development, and others are planned.

Connections with Explore Your Environment

You may be wondering how the Forest Literary Framework relates to PLT’s new Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide. Both resources reference one another, so you can easily see how different PLT activities reinforce forest literacy concepts.

What’s more, our new online professional development (launching in August!) takes participants through three activities that advance the understanding of the themes presented in the Forest Literacy Framework. The online course also connects the hot topics detailed above with the 50 hands-on activities in Explore Your Environment.

Continue the Conversation

The Forest Literacy Framework is a living document, always changing and evolving. Please consider sharing and helping to improve it by completing a three-question online survey!

Cyberchase Workshop with PLT

Posted on April 14, 2021May 7, 2021 by Jackie Stallard

As part of Project Learning Tree’s partnership with WNET and PBS‘s Cyberchase, PLT hosted a joint FacebookLIVE event on Wednesday, April 7, 2021. The event’s “Explore the Outdoors” theme focused on PLT activity adaptations featured in Cyberchase’s Green It Up Activity Cards.

Watch the 20-minute WorkshopLIVE video below to learn about the many fun ways children and their families can take inspiration from nature to create a My Tree Journal. The demonstration uses new Journal pages from the PLT activity Adopt a Tree in PLT’s new Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide.

The event also featured a 3-minute video clip recorded last year by the late Virginia PLT State Coordinator and environmental education champion, Page Hutchinson. In this clip she demonstrates ways of observing and studying a specific tree throughout the year to hone students’ observational skills and understanding of trees.

Our Partners

Cyberchase is a STEM-focused animated show that encourages kids to learn about and appreciate the math and technology all around them. The series and supporting web games and activities encourage kids to see, think and do mathematics, and in addition to being tons of fun, the content has been carefully designed to support math education and reflect national curriculum standards. WNET is America’s flagship PBS station, bringing quality education programming to more than five million viewers each week, producing a wide range of acclaimed PBS series.

Janice Fuld, Outreach Producer for WNET, New York Public Media shared: “It was a pleasure to have Jaclyn as our special guest star. I really liked the way she conducted the demos in a very clear and engaging fashion! I think it really flowed nicely and I also thought Page’s video was a great addition to the session.”

View and share the 20-minute WorkshopLIVE event directly at: https://www.facebook.com/cyberchase/videos/784452188857225

New PLT Activity Collections: Biodiversity Blitz for Grade 3-5

Posted on November 8, 2020August 14, 2023 by Jackie Stallard

Project Learning Tree is excited to launch a new series of theme-based activity collections that focus on specific grade levels and topics.

Biodiversity Blitz is the third collection of activities to be released as part of this new themed series for educators. It features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 3-5 that invite learners to investigate variability among species in an ecosystem, and how this variability – or biodiversity – helps sustain life on Earth.

The activity collection is available for purchase from PLT’s Shop as a downloadable PDF for $5.95.

PLT recently released Discover Your Urban Forest for grades 6-8 and Sensational Trees for grades K-2.

The Diversity of Life

One of Earth’s most valuable resources is its biodiversity, the variety of species that live here. Biodiversity is reflected in the wide range of ecosystems and species on Earth and in the genetic diversity within and among species. Biologists estimate that Earth’s current biodiversity is somewhere between 10 million and 1 trillion different species, living in a range of biological communities.

Biodiversity is one of the most important indicators of an ecosystem’s health. That is because biological richness means organisms have more options to get the food and other resources they need. And greater biodiversity means a greater ability to cope with change. Even if some species face food shortage, habitat loss, climate change, or other threats, the ecosystem as a whole is more likely to sustain itself.

Humans, like other organisms, depend on biodiversity to live. Diversity within and among species provides us with a variety of food, wood, fibers, energy, raw materials, chemicals, and medicines and contributes hundreds of billions of dollars yearly to the world economy.

Biodiversity Blitz: Grades 3-5 Activities

Biodiversity Blitz features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 3-5. Designed to be flexible, the activities can be used as individual, stand-alone lessons, or all together as a cohesive unit of instruction using a storyline technique.

1. Discover Diversity

Students imagine that they are visitors from outer space, viewing life on Earth for the first time. As they describe the life they find in a small plot, they will become more aware of the diversity of life.

2. Charting Biodiversity

Students explore different ways that organisms are adapted for survival. This activity helps students understand why there are so many different species on Earth.

3. Web of Life

By conducting research and modeling a food web, students learn how diverse organisms are connected in a forest or other ecosystem.

Learning Progressions

Storylines provide connectedness and continuity to individual activities and can serve as the instructional glue that holds areas of knowledge and skills together. The activities in Biodiversity Blitz may be linked together into a unit of instruction using a storyline technique, such as the one that follows.

Guiding Question: What is biodiversity and why is it important?

Storyline: Students investigate to find out ways that species are adapted for survival and how the biodiversity of species in an ecosystem contributes to its stability.

The sequence of individual activities supports this storyline:

Begin the unit with “Discover Diversity” to give students an opportunity to observe the diversity of life in a small plot of land. Encourage them to compare their data with others to help them determine what factors influence both abundance and diversity.
Use “Charting Biodiversity” to help students understand why there is such diversity in species on Earth. In the activity, students organize organisms according to their adaptations, and identify species that meet specific criteria. Challenge them to consider why there are so many different species and the value of biodiversity.
“Web of Life” involves students in researching different species to find out their specific needs for survival, and then using those species to model a food web. Through the model, students can see that the more diverse the ecosystem, the more stable it is.

New Features Within Each Activity

Academic Standards

Here is an example from “Discover Diversity”:

Take It Outside!

Describes how to extend student learning into the outdoors.

Differentiated Instruction Strategies

Cooperative Learning
ELA Skills
Hands-On Learning
Higher-Order Thinking
Multiple Solution Pathways
Nonlinguistic Representations
Personal Connections
Student Voice

Did You Know?

Forest Facts present interesting insights into forests as global solutions for environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

Career Corner

Introduces youth to forest-related careers.

Purchase Biodiversity Blitz now from PLT’s Shop for $5.95.

New PLT Activity Collections: Sensational Trees for Grades K-2

Posted on October 18, 2020December 4, 2020 by Jackie Stallard

Project Learning Tree is excited to launch a new series of theme-based activity collections that focus on specific grade levels and topics.

Sensational Trees is the second collection of activities to be released as part of this new themed series for educators. It features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades K-2 that invite young learners to investigate trees using their senses.

The activity collection is available for purchase from PLT’s Shop as a downloadable PDF for $5.95.

PLT recently released Discover Your Urban Forest for grades 6-8. Another theme-based activity collection will be coming soon for grades 3-5 focused on biodiversity.

Trees as a Sensory Experience

Exploring nature is a complete sensory experience. It is filled with countless shades of color, an array of sounds made by wind or wildlife, various scents from trees and plants, and much more.

Sensory experiences with the natural world excite children’s imaginations and foster their inborn curiosity and sense of wonder, which are important motivators for lifelong learning. Introducing environmental education in early schooling reaches children at a key developmental period in their lives. It has the potential to influence lifelong attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior toward the natural world.

Trees are an essential part of life on Earth. They give oxygen and help to clean water. They provide food and shelter for countless creatures. For human beings, trees provide shade for our picnics, fuel for our fires, wood for our furniture, inspiration for our creativity, and lots more.

Trees also provide a natural focal point for sensory explorations. Using their five senses, young learners can investigate trees – and learn about nature – through:

- Touching bark, seeds, and other natural objects
- Seeing shapes and colors
- Hearing birdcalls and nature sounds
- Smelling flowers and leaves

Sensational Trees: Grades K-2 Activities

Sensational Trees features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades K-2. Designed to be flexible, the activities can be used as individual, stand-alone lessons, or all together as a cohesive unit of instruction using a storyline technique.

1. The Closer You Look

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, students go outdoors or view pictures to take a closer look at trees and their parts.

2. Peppermint Beetle

Students explore their sense of smell and discover why smell is important to animals, including beetles and humans.

3. Adopt a Tree

Students select individual trees to observe over time, deepening their awareness of tree changes and developing a greater appreciation for their local environment.

Learning Progressions

Storylines provide connectedness and continuity to individual activities and can serve as the instructional glue that holds areas of knowledge and skills together. The activities in Sensational Trees may be linked together into a unit of instruction using a storyline technique, such as the one that follows.

Guiding Question: What can we learn about trees using our senses?

Storyline: Students use their senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch to explore trees in their own community.

The sequence of individual activities supports this storyline:

Beginning with “The Closer You Look,” introduce the idea that each tree is individual and unique, and that we can use our sense of sight to learn more about a tree’s form and parts.
Use “Peppermint Beetle” to hone students’ sense of smell and to challenge them to differentiate various scents.
“Adopt a Tree” encourages students to conduct a variety of sensory investigations of a tree close to them. If possible, repeat the investigations over time so that they become increasingly adept at using their senses to collect data and also more familiar with “their” tree.