|
|
Great Books for Teaching Conservation
This selection includes many new and established conservation classics written by respected authors. They are excellent tools for informing teachers and educating students.
Use the quick access buttons to easily get to the categories of interest to you.
  Please!
Tell us about the books and resources you think are great.
We will share them with other teachers.
Tell us what you think!
Teaching Books and Guides
Discovering the Naturalist Intelligence: Science in the Schoolyard
- Jenna Glock, Susan Wertz, and Maggie Meyer / 1998
- A useful how to guide for teachers that can help identify and define naturalist abilities in students. Naturalist intelligence is developed with well-structured lesson plans that include outdoor activities. Each of the lesson plans includes an assessment of comprehension, direct connections with writing and reading extensions of the curriculum, and the relevant national science standards.
|
|
Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World
- David W. Orr (with Fritjof Capra, Michael K. Stone, & Zenobia Barlow) / 2005
- The authors believe ecological literacy requires education at all levels. The intention is to awaken an integrated awareness that includes family, local geography, ecological and political systems. Fritjof Capra is one of the great global thinkers and writers of our time. This book is part of the Bioneers Series.
|
|
Enriching the Young Naturalist: The Nature of a Science Classroom
- A guidebook to creating an engaging science classroom with a focus of student self discovery of natural beauty and what it means to be connected to nature.
|
|
Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators
- Real human connection with nature can best be nurtured locally. The author presents seven principals for connecting children with nature by using well-designed experiential learning experiences to enable the seven principals to become enduring realizations.
|
|
Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea
- Children learn by doing growing, cooking, and sharing. This book is a visionary model and a call to action. Ten years ago one teacher began with abandoned soil in one schoolyard and has grown a national movement. Edible Education is a must read for willing and able teachers with access to dirt. Award winning photographer David Littschwager makes this book a work of art.
|
|
Hands-On Nature: Information and Activities for Exploring the Environment with Children
- Jenepher Linglebach, Lisa Purcell & Susan Sawyer / 2000
- The book is organized around five themes to provide learning experiences for children. The themes of Habitats, Cycles, Adaptations, Earth and Sky, and Designs of Nature focus on experiential activities that engage students in a hands on appreciation of nature.
|
|
Get Out! 150 Easy Ways for Kids & Grown-Ups to Get into Nature and Build a Greener Future
- This book is about fun ways to get outside and learn a lot in the process. It includes a lot of excursion ideas for classes, families, and individuals. The many simple and fun outdoor projects are generally quick, cheap, and easy ways to learn about and appreciate nature.
|
|
How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate
- Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch / 2010
- Outstanding photographs and clear scientific evidence are presented by two of the most widely read and respected authors of children's environmental books. Good overview of climate science. A corresponding Teacher's Guide with lesson plans makes this book particularly useful as a teaching tool.
|
|
Granted! A Teacher's Guide to Writing and Winning Classroom Grants
- This step-by-step how to guide enables teachers to be efficient and successful in getting grants. The methods are tried and true. They have been proven by the experience of teachers and administrators who have learned what works, and what does not work.
|
|
The Learning Garden: Ecology, Teaching, and Transformation
- The story of the Learning Garden is inspirational. It shows how the project started with nothing except a will to learn and do something about the environment. The outcome was a transformational experience for the teachers, students, and the community.
|
|
No Student Left Indoors: Creating a Field Guide to Your Schoolyard
- The Schoolyard Project is designed to connect nature, science, art and technology with written and spoken communication skills. It can be scaled from one class or grade to a school or district.
|
|
I Love Dirt!: 52 Activities to Help You & Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature
- Children ages four to nine are the focus of fifty-two creative activities designed to actively engage children in exploring and appreciating the beauty and wonder of nature.
|
|
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder
- Acclaimed as a must read by respected reviewers, Last Child in the Woods is able to prove that children need nature in a way that is both inspirational and encouraging.
|
|
Let the River Run Silver Again!
- Celebrated and award winning story of a class of Maryland elementary students successful participation in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Fish Passages Program. The model of what they did and how they did it can be replicated in a wide range of locations and venues.
|
|
Adult and High School
Cadillac Desert
- A masterful, carefully researched, broadly acclaimed, and widely influential history of how migrating people and the often corrupt politics of water have disrupted nature in the American west and created a system that is unsustainable for cities and agriculture based on rapidly disappearing water resources.
|
|
National Geographic Atlas of the Ocean: The Deep Frontier
- The author is a marine biologist who is Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society, Honorary President of the Explorers Club, etc. She has written 130 publications including many widely read and respected books for young people. She knows what she is talking about, and how to say it well. Abundant great photographs, maps, satellite images, and charts make this book an enjoyable learning experience.
|
|
The Oxford Dictionary of Environment and Conservation
- Ideal reference book for teachers and students of the environment. Includes 8,500 entries. Identifies key thinkers, international treaties, economic, historical, and political terms as well as various assessment scales, geological timescales, and useful websites.
|
|
Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists
- The life stories of six outstanding women naturalists and scientists begins with each as a young child who is open to exploring nature in simple ways. Most faced discrimination from male scientists when they were typically the only woman in the field. Intriguing and inspirational stories of brave and bright women who loved nature enough to make a difference against great odds.
|
|
A Handful of Dirt
- The author's photo essays have won major awards. This book is a remarkable and enlightening tour of the wonders within a handful of dirt. It will change perspectives on soil for adults and children.
|
|
The Atlas of Water: Mapping the World's Most Critical Resource
- Maggie Black and Janet King / 2009
- The 2009 edition is completely revised with remarkable graphics that include charts and maps. It defines and illuminates the relationship humans have with water around the world in the present, past, and future.
|
|
Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
- This award winning and highly acclaimed book encompasses global historical, cultural, economic, and political, and scientific perspectives to clearly show the current issues and coming global crisis with water. The book is a compelling narrative and call to action.
|
|
Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature
- Rachel Carlson did more than any single person to alert the world to the dangers of environmental poisoning. The author is a Research Professor of Environmental History. She has written a sensitive and compelling story of Carlson's inspirational and heroic life. This book is a must read for young women in particular.
|
|
Written in Water: Messages of Hope for Earth's Most Precious Resource
- National Geographic assembled twenty-five inspirational essays based on the experiences of conservationists and ordinary citizens who have made meaningful differences in getting water clean and available to all people. Excellent source for teaching many things including the story of water on our planet.
|
|
Silent Spring
- Rachel Carson is one of the great environmental pioneers in the history of the world. Her book 'Silent Spring' was the turning point in changing the culture of willful ignorance and concealment with regard to environmental degradation by poisonous chemicals. She changed America and the world. This book is a must read for any person who is serious about learning how to heal the planet.
|
|
Middle School
Paddle to the Sea
- Holling C. Holling / 1969
- This Caldecott Honor book has outstanding text and pictures that tell the story of a Native American boy who makes a small canoe that travels through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. The history and geography of the region are well described in the process.
|
|
Champions of the Ocean
- This collection of stories about the great environmentalist heroes of ocean exploration is part of the Earth Heroes series. The youth and careers of Jacques Cousteau, Bill Beebe, and Sylvia Earle are featured.
|
|
A Drop of Water: A Book Of Science And Wonder
- Outstanding photography makes this highly acclaimed book an engaging entry to many simple science experiments and the process of scientific inquiry. Water will never be the same.
|
|
Urban Roosts: Where Birds Nest in the City
- The author has written highly acclaimed Sierra Club books. Her beautiful paintings add beauty to this book which can engage young people in a more complete understanding of how nature adapts so that natural creatures can live among humans in urban settings.
|
|
There's A Hair in My Dirt: A Worm's Story
- Gary Larson, the world-class cartoonist, provides an entertaining story that makes key points about the lives and struggles of little creatures while teaching important environmental concepts.
|
|
John Muir: My Life with Nature
- This autobiography of John Muir has been widely acknowledged as engaging and informative. It shows the life of the man, why his love of nature developed as it did, and how he became one of the greatest environmentalists in human history.
|
|
Keepers of the Earth
- Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac / 1997
- Native American stories are the context in which a wide range of hands on projects and activities are presented.
|
|
Elementary School
The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest
- Widely acclaimed and best selling story of what a Great Kapok Tree means to each of the many creatures who live within it deep in the Amazon rain forest. The woodcutter falls asleep in the shadow of the tree and has a dream that changes his life. Great integration of individual lives to a world ecology.
|
|
I Can Name 50 Trees Today!
- The Cat in the Hat is an engaging guide to trees. This book is a fun way to learn about the different parts of trees as well as how to identify the most common trees in America.
|
|
Conrad Saves Pinger Park
- An able eight year old organizes friends and neighbors to save a favorite public park from development. The story makes important points about the value of urban parks, as well as caring for and protecting them.
|
|
Flute's Journey: The Life of a Wood Thrush
- Flute is a Wood Thrush who has great adventures on his first round trip migration from Maryland to Costa Rica.
|
|
Bag in the Wind
- Beautifully told and illustrated tale of a plastic bag touching the lives of many people as it travels through a variety of man made and natural environments.
|
|
Brother Eagle, Sister Sky
- Chief Seattle, Illustrated by Susan Jeffers / 2002
- Exceptional full color illustrations bring the wisdom of Chief Seattle to life in this story focused on the native American belief that the earth and all creatures are sacred.
|
|
The Lorax
- One of the great classics of children's literature and an important pioneering work on environmental education. And, it is still one of the most fun and compelling stories about conservation for young children. No childhood is complete with out the Lorax!
|
|
The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks
- Classic children's story of Ms. Frizzle's class ride on the the Magic School Bus. Starting as a raindrop and falling from a cloud the bus takes the children through the entire water cycle.
|
|
When Winter Comes
- Engaging presentation of how common creatures handle winter. Well illustrated.
|
|
|
Ask the Insulation Guy!