Lesson Plans: Environmental Education Writing Ideas

Need "green" lesson plans? Environmental education is a "natural habitat" for creative writing ideas. Try these tips for including creative writing within any environmental education lesson plan. Most teachers know that kids are very interested in what's good for their communities. They want to do what is best for the environment. Creative writing ideas not only strengthen concepts in conservation and science, but they also inspire a sense of pride and belonging to the earth itself. The following writing projects are based upon the RAFTS technique, outlined here. Use the examples below as models for incorporating a writing component into any environmental education lesson plan. Then return to this page for a step-by-step explanation of how to develop creative writing ideas across the curriculum, conservation science included!

Lesson Plans: Environmental Education Writing Ideas for Coastal and Water Conservation

Coastal Coasters

• Role: home accessories designer
• Audience: customers
• Format: coasters
• Topic: preserving coastal environments
• Strong Verb: design and create

You are a home accessories designer. For future customers, design and create a series of drinking coasters with coastal illustrations. On each coaster, include a written message about the importance of keeping coasts and beaches clean.

Water Watchers

• Role: you
• Audience: classmates
• Format: poster
• Topic: water conservation
• Strong Verb: design and illustrate

Your class is studying water conservation. Design a colorful poster, complete with written captions, illustrating one way to conserve water. Your poster will join a display in the school's main hallway.

Lesson Plans: Environmental Education Writing Ideas for Recycling

The Paper Challenge

• Role: newspaper reporter
• Audience: readers
• Format: feature article
• Topic: recycling challenge between schools
• Strong Verb: write

You are a newspaper reporter. Two local schools challenged each other to recycle the most paper. All the money earned went to environmental projects. Write an article about the paper challenge. Give details about the project and what was done with the money raised. In writing your article, remember to answer who, what, when, where, why, and how.

The Life of a Paper Bag

• Role: a paper bag
• Audience: yourself
• Format: a journal
• Topic: your "life cycle" as you are reused
• Strong Verb: write and illustrate

You are a paper bag. Instead of being thrown away, you are reused and recycled from one person to another. Keep a journal in which you write about and illustrate all of your uses. Perhaps for one person you carry groceries; for another, you are a book cover; for the next, you become a Halloween mask; for the fourth person, you are made into a cat toy; and on it goes.

Don't Trash Our Home!

• Role: product designer
• Audience: consumers
• Format: labels on packaged items
• Topic: reminders to recycle
• Strong Verb: design

You are a product designer. Design a ticket, candy wrapper, or juice bottle. Your package or label should have a message urging people to dispose of trash properly and not to litter. The message could even be right in the product's name.

Lesson Plans: Environmental Education Heroes

Earth-Friendly Friend

• Role: you
• Audience: contest judge
• Format: descriptive essay
• Topic: a "friend to the Earth" award
• Strong Verb: nominate and describe

You are nominating someone you know to receive the Friend to the Earth award, sponsored by a conservation agency. Write an essay for the contest judge, nominating this person and describing in detail why he or she deserves this award.

Help your students get to know some of the great men and women who spearheaded and shaped different facets of modern conservation. Each person listed below is considered a giant in the environmental education movement. Remember to visit these pages for project ideas on writing creative informational reports and biographies.

• Dian Fossey
• Henry Bergh
• Rachel Carson
• Albert Schweitzer
• John Muir
• Jacques Cousteau
• Giovanni Francesco Bernardone (St. Francis of Assisi)

Finished those "green" lesson plans? Environmental education offers magnificent opportunities for your students to show they care about our beautiful planetary home through creative writing ideas! You never know! You may be nurturing the next great conservation giant!

Return from Lesson Plans:Environmental Education to Creative Writing Ideas

Return from Lesson Plans:Environmental Education to Creative Writing Ideas and Activities

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