Resources for Educators

Search through this thorough collection of standards-based resources from various organizations curated by Schools Program staff on all things 4R’s, plastic pollution and more. From complete lesson plans to stand-alone exercises, you can save time and start implementing many of these lessons in your classroom or school today!

4R’s Teacher Resources Toolkit (PDF)

This student food waste audit guide is intended to help educate students about the amount of food they waste in their school cafeterias and to
encourage them to reduce waste and eat more of the nutritious foods provided through USDA’s school meals programs or brought from home.

USDA Cafeteria Food Waste Audit Guide (PDF) 

An interactive map made by Save the Bay shows the locations and provides detailed descriptions of open or active landfills and clsoed landfills. Descriptions include dates of operation, historical anecdotes of dumping activity, and what you would currently see at closed landfill locations. 

Hidden History of the Bay Shoreline Map

Bay Nature magazine recounts the history of Cooley Landing from city dump to urban open space and ecological hot spot. 

East Palo Alto Turns Trash Into Treasure

Find fundamental lessons in biodiversity, stormwater pollution prevention, human/environment interactions and decision making, and the intersection of systems thinking and sustainability created by the Tech Museum of San Jose. 

Solve for Earth Sustainability Lessons

An activity guide intended to educate students in kindergarten through ninth grade to help them understand the definition of water pollution using the basic principles of science and mathematics. The activities focus on the four main types of water pollutants – sediments, nutrients, bacteria and toxins. All of the activities are “hands on” and designed to blend with existing classroom curricula. Each activity is divided by classroom level and each of the activities is organized in the same way – detailing objectives, materials needed and background information.

Protecting Our Water Resources: Student Activities for the Classroom (PDF)

Dirt. Everyone needs a fundamental understanding on the literal foundation of our world. Soil recycles nutrients, sequesters carbon, absorbs and filters water, and is the foundation of the ecological food chain. The following websites contain information, lessons, experiments and games for K-12th grade directly to students or teachers.

https://www.soils4kids.org

https://www.soils4teachers.org

Before Spanish and European contact and colonization, what we now know as California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions in the world. This cultural diversity was intimately tied with a profound knowledge, relationship and management of the diverse ecoregions of California and its most salient features: the coastline, vast grasslands, extensive marshes and wetlands, rivers and forests, oak woodlands, the foothills and mountain regions. The Ohlone and Bay Miwok Curriculum created in partnership with the East Bay Regional Parks District is a student tested and standards aligned curriculum that will enhance any local environmental literacy and sustainability lessons that are looking to respectfully learn from the past to gain more awareness and connection to our unique Bay Area ecology in the present. 

Ohlone and Bay Miwok Curriculum

In this lesson found on the California Academy of Sciences site, read on to see how several notebook strategies worked together to help students build their science ideas about decomposition. Examples of student work and downloads of the complete lesson plan are available.

Investigating Compost Lesson

This curriculum is packed with K-12 grade solutions-oriented lesson plans and student materials that address a variety of California environmental issues and empowers students. Age-appropriate, solutions-focused, and trauma-informed, Seeds to Solutions prepares students to become engaged community members.

Seeds to Learning Curriculum

This curriculum is a living educational framework that brings Native American voices, histories, cultures, and contemporary realities into classrooms across the state. Designed to be culturally sustainable, inclusive, and adaptable for K–12 classrooms, the curriculum offers standards aligned units, mini units and lessons that integrate Native perspectives across disciplines including history, English language arts, science, social studies, and the arts.

Native American Studies Model Curriculum (NASC)