These resources, compiled by the education teams across the Smithsonian Institution feature lessons, activities, exhibitions, videos and tools that can be used to teach students about the broad climatic, biodiversity, and other forces underway that will shape Earth’s future.

Climate Change

Second Opinion: Forging the Future – Smithsonian Resources
This is a Smithsonian Learning Lab topical collection, which contains interdisciplinary education resources, including student interactives, videos, images and blogs to complement the Smithsonian's national conversation on "Forging the Future" and our ever-changing planet, highlighted on Second Opinion. Use this sample of the Smithsonian's many resources to introduce or augment your study of this topic and spark a conversation.
Provider: Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access
Grade(s): K-12

High Tide Case Study
Why would the Guna people of Panama leave the place where they've lived for over 150 years? Use these sources to determine if the environment and our relationships with it can be factors that force people from their homes.
Provider: National Museum of the American Indian
Grade(s): 7-8, 9-12

Idealabs: Prehistoric Climate Change (and Why It Matters Today)
Online interactive in which students compare leaf fossils to learn about the climate millions of years ago. They also meet a Smithsonian paleontologist in a video.
Provider: Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access
Grade(s): 4-8, 9-12

Traveling Lightly: What's My Footprint?
Teacher-created lesson in which students use measurement and basic math as they learn about the role of transportation in climate change. They consider ways of minimizing their impact on the environment.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8, 9-12

Environmental Dilemma Part I
Teacher-created lesson in which students devise a plan or create an invention to combat global warming.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8

Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely Classroom Activities
This companion to the exhibition Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely includes seven activities for classroom use. Students look at changes in the Arctic’s climate, which have been observed by both polar scientists and polar residents – changes that impact the Arctic’s wildlife and its peoples.
Provider: National Museum of Natural History
Grade(s): 4-8

Weather Lab
Weather Lab is a tool to help visualize how North America’s weather is formed. This lab is designed to model the complex interactions between air masses and ocean currents, but like all models it represents probable outcomes. Each prediction you make is for possible outcomes during Spring.
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grades: 5-8

Disaster Detector
Disaster Detector teaches players how to analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and how to implement tools to mitigate the effects of those disasters.
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grade(s): 6-8

Create an Ecotourism Plan
Students will identify a threatened area and conduct research to learn what it used to be like, what it's like now and why it changed. They will come up with an ecotourism plan that will encourage people to visit the area and show respect for the land.
Provider: Smithsonian TweenTribune.com
Grade(s): 3-10

Hold a Class Debate
Students will share what they know about Dubai and discuss reasons why that city wants to use flying taxis. They they will consider the merits of flying taxis and debate to decide whether or not flying taxis should be allowed in their own community.
Provider: Smithsonian TweenTribune.com
Grade(s): 3-10

Life on Earth

Showbiz Safari
Showbiz Safari is an educational life science game that will help teach your student about the diversity of plants and animals in different habitats.
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grade(s): 1-3

Morphy
Morphy is a life science game that teaches students that animals have external structures that function to support survival and behavior.
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grade(s): 1-3

Expedition: Insects
Expedition: Insects is an eBook designed and written by the Smithsonian Science Education Center and aligned with national science standards for grades 3-5. In the eBook, readers travel around the world to visit six different types of insects in their natural habitats. The young explorers learn about how evolution is responsible for all the beauty, fearsomeness and awe found in nature’s insects.
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grade(s): 3-5

Energy

Good Thinking! and Fired Up About Energy
“Good Thinking! The Science of Teaching Science” is an original animated series by the Smithsonian Science Education Center and FableVision Studios that brings viewers into the classroom of science educator Isabella Reyes as she explores “the science of teaching science”. Drawing from peer-reviewed research in science, cognition, and pedagogy, “Good Thinking! Fired Up About Energy” explores common student misconceptions from research related to the study of energy and suggests methods for effectively representing and discussing the topic in the classroom.
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grade(s): 5-8

Exploring Solar Energy: The Science Behind Design
Lesson about energy-related problems and design solutions in which students investigate the sources and properties of energy, conduct Internet research and create a workshop for their classmates.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 9-12

A Tall Ship and a Star to Steer Her By
This lesson explores transportation past and present, and addresses the use of inexhaustible power sources. Students design their own water transportation using inexhaustible power sources such as solar or wind power.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 9-12

Design Competition: Energy Systems of the Future!
Teacher-created lesson in which students develop concepts for using renewable resources.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8, 9-12

Designing "Green" to Save Our Green Planet
Teacher-created lesson in which students design environment-friendly homes. Their client: the planet Earth.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8, 9-12

Energy, Power to the People
Teacher-created lesson in which students research local energy issues and design a policy to address them.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8, 9-12

Energy, Sun Today, Sun Tomorrow; Sun Yesterday?
Teacher-created design lesson in which students consider the uses of solar energy. They learn how to track and measure the sun's radiance and study ways that past civilizations have harnessed the sun's energy.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8, 9-12

The Energy-Efficient Chemical House
Teacher-created lesson in which students design a house with efficient heating and cooling. They use their knowledge of conduction, convection and radiation in the design. 
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8

Migration

Smithsonian in Your Classroom: Tale of a Whale (and Why It Can Be Told)
Multistep lesson in which students do the work of scientists who study the endangered North Atlantic right whale. They compare photos to identify an individual whale and use a record of sighting to track this whale’s movements along the eastern seaboard.
Provider: Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access
Grade(s):4-8, 9-12

Preservation

American Indian Responses to Environmental Challenges
Multimedia website and lessons on the cultural, economic and scientific motivations behind environmental preservation in four American Indian communities.
Provider: National Museum of the American Indian
Grade(s): 4-8, 9-12

Explore Smithsonian Video Series
This video series takes an exclusive look at the science and research of the Smithsonian Institution. Each video in this series is designed for use in the classroom by highlighting a driving question and following Smithsonian scientists as they go about the process of science. Viewers are taken from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, to the Chandra Telescope Mission Control Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Viewers even get to visit the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park to learn about the types of adaptations pandas, like Bao Bao, have for their distinctive bamboo diet. Each video is an adventure of science and learning, and we use the world’s largest museum and research complex as our own personal classroom.
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grade(s): 3 - 8

Food and Habitats

Habitats
Do you know where the red-eyed tree frog calls home? Play this game based on animal habitats to learn! Explore the desert, coral reef, jungle, and marsh to discover where many animals live by matching each animal to their correct habitat!
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grade(s): 3 - 5

Composting Conundrum
In this lesson plan, students use a graphic organizer to determine what might be involved in composting food scraps from the cafeteria. They learn new vocabulary, work in groups on a design solution and build a prototype of a food collector. 
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8

Soil, Design a CSA/Food Market
Teacher-created lesson in which students design a system of community-supported agriculture (CSA). Includes such math applications as measurement and geometry. 
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8, 9-12

Soil, Food Mapping
Teacher-created lesson in which students analyze the "food system" in their community. They look for solutions to any ecological or social problems inherent in the system.
Provider: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Grade(s): 4-8

Shorelines: Life and Science at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Blog follows the ongoing work of the Smithsonian's Environmental Research Center as they investigate climate change, invasive species, food webs, and other environmental issues around the world.
Provider: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Grade(s): General Audience

STEMVisions Blog: Chronicling Climate Change
This blog shares science stories focused on climate change, invasive species, food webs, and other environmental issues around the world. For example, read about the bristlecone trees, which act as chroniclers of climate history.
Provider: Smithsonian Science Education Center
Grade(s): General Audience

Design a Food Forest
Students design a plan for a food forest in their community. The plan includes details about location, content, maintenance, customer base and funding. 
Provider: Smithsonian TweenTribune.com
Grade(s): 3-10

Spanish Resources

Nuestra casa en el universe
Spanish-language introduction to environmentalism and “our home in the universe” in comic-book form.
Provider: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
​Grade(s): PreK-3, 4-8