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American Forest Foundation - Project Learning Tree
Project Learning Tree is sponsored nationally by the American Forest Foundation. A nonprofit educational and conservation organization developing, funding, and administering programs that encourage the long-term stewardship of our natural resources. The Foundation's core programs are Project Learning Tree (PLT) and American Tree Farm System.
Project Learning Tree (PLT) is sponsored at the State level by a variety of State natural resource and education agencies. Crafted to meet State and national standards, PLT provides all the tools educators need to bring the environment into their classrooms -- and their students into the environment. PLT's supplementary curriculum guide, Project Learning Tree: Environmental Education Pre K-8 Activity Guide (96 multidisciplinary activities), focuses on the total environment: land, air, and water. It is local, national, and global in scope. The curriculum underscores PLT's primary goal - to increase students' understanding of our complex environment. PLT is designed to teach students how to think, not what to think, about environmental issues. The curriculum remains easily adaptable to many settings from the classroom to youth organizations, museums, nature centers, and Scout troops. Each activity features Reading Connections, and many activities have Technology Connections and Differentiated Instruction identified. Two of the storylines in the Project Learning Tree: Environment Education Pre K-8 Activity Guide focus on energy. The first storyline highlights the concept that energy exists in different forms and comes from renewable and non-renewable sources. The second storyline emphasizes that society's use energy in many different ways and that human use of energy has short- and long-term social, economical, environmental, and health impacts. These energy storylines are comprised of 14 activities. PLT provides secondary education teachers with a series of topic-specific modules that challenge students to explore every facet of an issue -- illustrating the complexity of real-life environmental decisions. In particular, two of PLT's secondary education module, Exploring Environmental Issues: Municipal Solid Waste and Exploring Environmental Issues: Places We Live, helps students explore causes and solutions of this universal urban environmental issue. PLT offers the Energy & Society kit - energy education materials at the Pre K-8 level. Students learn about their relationship with energy and investigate the environmental issues related to energy's role in society. Energy & Society helps students develop critical thinking skills to make decisions about their personal energy use. In addition to hands-on activities, Energy & Society integrates music and dance to enhance the study of energy issues. The kit includes an activity guide with background information for educators, music CD, dance video, and poster set, and is available online at http://shop.plt.org, as well as through workshops. All PLT curricular materials are available through local workshops. Contact PLT for the name of the program coordinator in your state or visit the PLT website at www.plt.org for more information on all of PLT's programs.
1111 19th Street, N.W., Suite 780
Washington DC 20036
Phone: (202) 463-2475
Fax: (202) 463-2461
Email: information@plt.org
www.plt.org