Addressing Middle and High School Disciplinary Literacy Through Forestry Education
This workshop is designed for the science, social studies or agriculture teacher who wants to gain practice with integrating disciplinary literacy skills into content area teaching and learning. Using examples provided from both outdoor and classroom-based forestry education activities, we will explore how to maximize CCSS-connected opportunities for reading, writing, speaking and listening within teachers’ existing curriculum. The workshop will include time for collaboration and lesson planning, and a variety of ready-to-use activities will be supplied so teachers can integrate relevant lessons right away. (EE stipulation)

Assessing your Green & Healthy School
Appropriate for Unregistered, Sprout, and Seedling schools/districts
30 minutes to half day; or multiple sessions
Participants evaluate, measure, and benchmark current practices, policies, and assets for the school or district; identify priority areas; and create and action plan for moving forward in addressing areas of need for sustainability, health, and wellness.

BioEnergy Education

This workshop offers hands-on activities, class discussions, and classroom-based applications to enhance students' understanding of BioEnergy. Participants will explore BioEnergy resources (including solid biomass, biogas, and liquid biofuels) and discuss the benefits and challenges of utilizing these sources compared with conventional fossil fuels. Through hands-on experiences this workshop will highlight how BioEnergy resources work and how Wisconsin is utilizing them. The workshop will include time for collaboration and lesson planning, and a selection of ready-to-use activities will be supplied so teachers can integrate relevant lessons right away. Recommended for teachers of grades 5-12. 

Creating a Culture of School Sustainability
Appropriate for schools/districts at all GHS levels
30 minutes to two hours; or multiple sessions
Participants explore the importance and implications of being a “green and healthy school” and gain an understanding of best practices and strategies for cultivating and preserving a culture of sustainability in the school community. Participants will be introduced to effective storytelling and communication strategies for sharing your stories with your school community.

Developing Elementary Literacy Skills Through Outdoor Learning
Use the outdoors to engage students and inspire the reading and writing process. Taking our classes outside on school grounds provides the opportunity for an immersive and inspired literacy experience. Activities provided are intended to be integrated into an existing balanced literacy model. Examples of activities include practicing use of sensory and figurative language, using observations for informational writing, word choice exercises, creating group poetry, and much more. The workshop will include time to apply new techniques to their existing plans and share ideas with others, and a variety of ready-to-use activities will be supplied so teachers can integrate relevant lessons right away. (EE stipulation)

Discovering Energy in Nature

You've likely heard that bringing your classroom outdoors can be an effective way to teach. According to the Children and Nature Network, there are numerous reasons for taking students outside: Nature enhances academic achievement, improves student behavior, motivates the students to learn, promotes communication, improves cooperation, helps students focus, and of course makes them healthier and happier! Join the Wisconsin K-12 Energy Education Program (KEEP) to discover energy lessons that can effectively be taught outside. Take temperatures to investigate how shading, coloring, and other factors affect temperature; survey different environments to determine how sunlight, soil moisture, temperature, and wind affect living elements in an ecosystem; and spend time in a beautiful setting while making curriculum connections. (EE stipulation)

Energize Your Curriculum with Renewable Energy
Renewable energy is exciting! Does it work in Wisconsin? Get your students excited about renewable energy and the
implications it has for our environment and economy, while exploring potential careers in the energy industry. This
workshop provides hands-on activities and classroom-based applications for teachers to help analyze energy information
and create strategies and techniques to enhance STEM in their classrooms. Use the engineering design process while
building a solar cooker, wind and water turbines. Develop phenomena for your NGSS lessons. Workshop participants will
receive the KEEP Doable Renewables: Renewable Energy Education Activity Guide. Recommended for teachers of grades
5-12, adaptable to PK-4 audiences. (EE stipulation)

Enhancing Culture of School Sustainability through Family Education Programming
Appropriate for schools/districts at all GHS levels
30 minutes to two hours
Develop a plan for growing your school community’s culture of sustainability through family education. Explore options for school-to-home programming and assess other strategies that your school can use to reinforce connections between the school and home environments.

Focus Area Specific: Community Involvement, Energy, Environmental Health, Environmental Education, Health & Wellness, Waste Management, School Site, Transportation, Water
Appropriate for schools/districts at all GHS levels
30 minutes to multiple day
The Green & Healthy Schools Wisconsin team will help you build a workshop experience personalized to your school or district needs related to any of the Focus Areas.

Forest Health and the Energy Connection: Leveraging Your School Site to Save Energy
Join LEAF and KEEP to explore the intersection between energy conservation and forest health. Your urban forest is a powerful tool improving your community’s air and water quality, reducing heating and cooling needs, and curbing greenhouse gas emissions. We’ll demonstrate how to conduct tree inventories on your school grounds then apply the ecosystem benefits derived to evaluate your school building’s energy management opportunities. You’ll become connected to two online civic science tools for the classroom, the Wisconsin Community Tree Map from the WDNR and PLT’s Teaching with i-Tree, as well as receive training using professional forestry and energy tools available for loan to your school. The workshop will include time for school site assessment and lesson planning, and a variety of ready-to-use activities and tools will be supplied so educators can integrate relevant lessons right away. Recommended for educators of grades 5-12. (EE Stipulation)

Increasing Student Engagement and Literacy Skills Through Energy
Infuse relevant information and various teaching methods into content area while increasing student engagement and energy literacy. This workshop will provide engaging, cross-curricular activities that meet ELA standards with a hands-on STEM approach focused on energy concepts. Activities provided will fit with the workshop model and include gathering and analyzing data, exploring feature articles, comparing and contrasting readings, and exposure to current events and text sets. The workshop will include time for collaboration and lesson planning, and a variety of ready-to-use activities will be supplied so teachers can integrate relevant lessons right away. (EE stipulation)

Introduction to Forestry Education for the K-12 Classroom
Teach students the importance of Wisconsin’s forests to our ecological, economic, and social well-being. This introductory workshop will present principles, activities and techniques to integrate hands-on forestry education into the K-12 science, social studies, agriculture, mathematics, technology education, ELA, and general elementary classroom. Standards alignment, STEM connections, literacy, and a brief introduction to outdoor teaching will be discussed. The workshop will include time to begin the process of infusing forestry activities into each teacher’s existing curriculum, and a variety of ready-to-use activities will be supplied so teachers can integrate relevant lessons right away. (EE stipulation)

Place-based Learning: Engaging Students in Sustainability
Learn how to use your building and surrounding community as an extension of your classroom. Explore STEM activities and hands-on tools that will engage students in the process of collecting energy data and developing ways to be more sustainable. An emphasis will be on unique features at your specific site to make learning relevant. Activities include measuring shadow lengths to determine sun’s height and location throughout the day and seasons; exploring the wind on-site to determine if the direction and speed of wind changes due to obstructions; taking temperatures of different surfaces around your site to determine how these surfaces effect energy consumption in the building; and utilizing maps to identify features that can be utilized for teaching and increasing sustainability. Recommended for teachers of grades K-6, adaptable for 7-12.

Planning for Sustainability
Appropriate for schools/districts at all GHS levels
Self paced, no set length, multiple sessions
This self-paced series of working meetings, facilitated by a Green & Healthy School Wisconsin coach, engages participants in the strategic planning process of reviewing current assets and practices, assessing needs, identifying resources, setting goals, and developing strategies. The result is a formalized sustainability plan for your school or district created with buy in from the whole school community. Level of engagement from the GHS coach and number of facilitated sessions is determined by your school or district.

School Grounds Sustainability
Best for Seedling and Sprout schools/districts
1 hour to full day
Through mapping, critical thinking, and information-finding activities, participants uncover the value of under-utilized areas of your school site: ecological services (passive heating and cooling, stormwater management, pollutant filtration, integrated pest management, biodiversity, etc); benefits to human health and wellness; and utilizing the school site as an extension of the classroom. Participants will identify opportunities for their site and create a proposal for enhancing the school site.

Sprouting a Green & Healthy School
Best for Unregistered or Sprout schools/districts
30 minutes to half day
This workshop is designed to guide schools that are considering joining or who are new to Green & Healthy Wisconsin in creating a school culture of sustainability. Participants will identify priorities, set goals, and create short-term sustainability plans to advance school health and sustainability. Teams of people from each school will use part of the workshop time to set action items for their team and pathways for completing the actions. Prior to the workshop, participants will use the Green & Healthy Schools Wisconsin Self-Assessment Tool to identify priority areas to guide their work during the workshop.

Step Outside and into Health and Wellness Engagement: Outdoor Classroom Leadership

 

Utilizing the School Building as a Teaching Tool: Investigations in Energy Efficiency
Empower students and staff to be part of the energy solution through relevant experimentation using cutting-edge
technology. This workshop utilizes the school building as a teaching tool to explore energy efficiency concepts and evaluate
energy use through hands-on discovery and advice from energy professionals. Participants develop energy-savings action
plans that meet demand for project- and STEM-based learning and link to future career options. The workshop will include
time for collaboration and lesson planning, and a variety of ready-to-use activities will be supplied so teachers can
integrate relevant lessons right away. Recommended for teachers of grades 5-12 and schools undergoing energy
management services. (EE stipulation)

Working Toward a "Three-Dimensional" Approach to K-8 Science Learning
The Next Generation Science Standards encourage a multifaceted approach to teaching and learning. This more holistic view also mirrors many of the goals of environmental education, making the environment a great context for learning science. In this workshop, we will dissect lessons from Project Learning Tree’s Environmental Education Activity Guide and look for the crosscutting concepts, disciplinary core ideas, and science practices they contain. We will then take the next step of connecting these lessons to your existing curriculum to help create well-rounded science units that are ready for the upcoming school year.