Curriculum

About PLT Curriculum

Project Learning Tree® (PLT) is the American Forest Foundation's environmental education program that produces high quality curriculum materials for students in grades PreK-12. PLT provides training and professional development opportunities for teachers, non-formal educators, and pre-service teachers (teachers in training.)

PLT teaches students how to think, not what to think about the environment.

Since the program began in the early 1970s, over 500,000 educators have used PLT to teach about both the natural and built environment—forests, wildlife, water, air, energy, waste, climate change, invasive species, community planning, and culture, to name a few. PLT activities guide students through a process that begins with awareness, moves to knowledge, challenges preconceived ideas, and seeks constructive avenues for environmental action. PLT provides educators the tools they need to bring the environment into their classrooms—and their students outside into the environment.

PLT for PreK-8 Educators

PLT’s state of the art PreK-8 curriculum materials are packed with inter-disciplinary activities, each tailored to specific grade levels and learning objectives.  These materials provide educators the tools they need to bring the environment into their classrooms – and their students into the environment.

PreK-8 Environmental Education Activity Guide
 
- 96 interdisciplinary activities grouped by theme and storyline
- Activities incorporate reading connections, technology connections, differentiated instruction, and assessment strategies
- Most activities require few special supplies or extra preparation
- All activities include up-to-date student resources and reproducible student pages, background information for educators, easy-to-follow instructions, and additional online resources
- Activities are correlated to national and most state learning standard

>>>Learn more about PLT’s PreK-8 Activity Guide

Energy & Society Kit

Through this kit students investigate the environmental issues related to energy’s role in society. The kit includes an activity guide, Energy & Me music CD and dance DVD, and a set of posters

>>>Learn more about PLT’s Energy & Society Kit

PLT for Secondary Educators

PLT’s secondary modules are topically based, challenging students to explore the many facets of an issue – illustrating the complexity of making real life environmental decisions.

PLT's secondary modules include:

Modules in Print:
- Exploring Environmental Issues: Focus on Forests
- The Changing Forest: Forest Ecology
- Exploring Environmental Issues: Municipal Solid Waste
- Exploring Environmental Issues: Places We Live
- Exploring Environmental Issues: Focus on Risk (This module includes a supplement on Biotechnology - in Development)
- Global Connections: Forests of the World

Available Online:
- Exploring Environmental Issues: Biodiversity 


Spanish Translations:
The Student pages and Glossaries from both the PreK-8 Activity Guide and the Municipal Solid Waste Secondary Module have been translated into Spanish to meet the growing needs for bilingual academic materials.

>>>Learn more about PLT's Spanish translations

Standards Correlations

All of PLT's curriculum materials are correlated to national education standards and many states have correlated the materials to state standards too.

PLT's Conceptual Framework

PLT's PreK-8 Activity Guide and other curriculum materials are arranged under five major themes:

 - Diversity
 - Interrelationships
 - Systems
 - Structure and Scale
 - Patterns of Change

Each theme covers the topics of Environment, Resource Management & Technology, and Society & Culture. The conceptual framework serves as the basis for the development of all of PLT's curriculum materials. PLT's conceptual framework was edited for the 2006 PreK-8 Guide.  Please select one of the following versions of the conceptual framework:

Editions prior to 2006

2006 PreK-8 Guide

Want to Reprint PLT Materials?

All PLT curriculum materials are protected under copyright laws.  No reproduction of PLT materials without prior written consent is allowed.  All requests for permission to reprint must be submitted to the national PLT office. 

>>> Learn more about PLT's reprint guidelines.