This wonderful resource contains instructions for seven games that teach students about the environment, ecosystems, and sustainability through play.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Many of the games are suitable for students in any grade level.
Many of the games can be played with very large groups.
Additional Prerequisites
Teachers may want to establish norms for discourse and play before beginning the games.
Teachers should check the materials needed beforehand.
Teachers should play one round while explaining the directions and then another round once everyone knows the game's rules. Repeated rounds of the game will help English language learners and students who benefit from repeated directions.
Differentiation
Bat and Moth, Migration Hopscotch, and Owls, Mice, Shrubs would be great games to use for review after an elementary science lesson on biology topics. Teachers could deliver the lesson, have the students play the game, and then ask the students to discuss how the game relates to the lesson.
Social studies classes or advisory groups could use the games Common Good, Social Hierarchy, and Generations to start conversations about climate justice, the environment, or structural inequalities.
The games in this resource are recommended for students to play to get involved in environmental activism.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
4-LS1-2 Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
5-LS2-1 Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.
LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
3-LS4-4 Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.6.K-2 Identify and explain a range of local, regional, and global problems, and some ways in which people are trying to address these problems.
D4.8.K-2 Use listening, consensus-building, and voting procedures to decide on and take action in their classrooms.
