Gaylord Nelson and How Earth Day Got Started

• This animated video provides information about Gaylord Nelson, the politician and environmental activist who invented Earth Day. 
• Students will learn about Nelson's lifelong mission to protect the environment and spread awareness about environmental issues. 
• This resource also includes a Google Slides presentation with audio and a lesson plan to use with the video. 
  

Positives

• This video covers an important time in environmental history. Students will learn how environmental ideas started entering into the American consciousness and translated into legislation during the 1970s.
• The video description contains a variety of helpful links to learn more about Gaylord Nelson and Earth Day.
  

Additional Prerequisites

• Students should be familiar with the following terms: civics, government reform, social justice, conservation, and teach-in.
  

Differentiation

• Social studies classes could use this video and lesson plan to discuss the role that the government plays in monitoring the environment and keeping it healthy.
• History students could expand on the timeline of significant environmental policies and link them to other historic events at each time.
• Science classes could prepare a presentation on Earth Day and present it during a school assembly in order to get the school community excited and prepared for the holiday.
• Other resources on this topic include this lesson plan on creating an environmental-awareness mural, this activity on making plantable seed paper, and this media-literacy activity on the government's role in protecting natural resources.
  

• College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
  • Dimension 2: Civics
    • D2.Civ.10.6-8 Explain the relevance of personal interests and perspectives, civic virtues, and democratic principles when people address issues and problems in government and civil society.
    • D2.Civ.12.3-5 Explain how rules and laws change society and how people change rules and laws.
    • D2.Civ.13.3-5 Explain how policies are developed to address public problems.
    • D2.Civ.6.3-5 Describe ways in which people benefit from and are challenged by working together, including through government, workplaces, voluntary organizations, and families.
  • Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
    • D4.7.6-8 Assess their individual and collective capacities to take action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
    • D4.6.3-5 Draw on disciplinary concepts to explain the challenges people have faced and opportunities they have created, in addressing local, regional, and global problems at various times and places.
    • D4.7.9-12 Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
  • Dimension 2: History
    • D2.His.1.9-12 Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.
• Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
  • ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
    • 5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.