Make Learning Fun
PLT’s hands-on activities make learning fun for all ages, while also building 21st century skills, stimulating knowledge gains, and actively engaging participants. Activities are conducted outside and indoors and provide lots of useful tips for managing active student behavior in both settings.
Begin Using Right Away
You don’t need a formal education degree to use PLT. While our activities employ highly effective and well-tested teaching strategies, they can be used by anyone. Each activity provides step-by-step instructions for getting ready, conducting the activity, and assessing learning. Many activities can be conducted in an hour, rely on simple materials that you likely already have on hand, and can be implemented with minimal prep time.
Use in Any Setting
A hallmark of PLT is how easily you can begin using it right away in any nonformal setting–indoors or outdoors, as well as rural, suburban, or urban. PLT can be readily incorporated into your indoor or outdoor educational programs for youth and families.
Teach Any Environmental Topic
With 96 activities in our PreK-8 Activity Guide and dozens more in our early childhood guide and high school modules, there is an activity for just about any environmental topic, from trees and forests to water, waste, climate change, wildlife, and much more.
Address Important Learning Objectives
PLT’s activities are proven to meet their intended learner outcomes, which are clearly articulated in every activity. We rigorously test our materials through formative and summative evaluations and field test them with hundreds of classroom teachers before they are published. PLT activities include inquiry-based teaching, cooperative learning, differentiated instruction, and authentic assessment.
Meet Academic Standards
PLT meets local, state, and national academic standards and we’ve already done the hard work of aligning all our activities to them. While PLT may be most often associated with meeting science requirements (and we do that very well!), our materials also effectively address STEM, English language arts, mathematics, social studies, service learning, and more.
Use Materials Deemed Excellent by NAAEE
PLT materials received ratings of excellence when reviewed as part of the National Program for Excellence by the North American Association for Environmental Education. This review process applied rigorous criteria described in Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence and Workbook.