How to Celebrate Earth Day in the Classroom, According to Two Environmental Educators
Looking for meaningful and easy-to-implement Earth Day activities for your classroom? Environmental educators Skylar Primm and Jharna Jassal answered all of our questions about bringing Earth Day to life for K-12 students. Whether you’re planning a lesson, a service project, or cross-curricular activities, Skylar and Jharna have offered practical strategies to bring environmental education to life. Here are their best ideas for celebrating and learning about our planet:
Exploring Why Earth Day Matters in the Classroom
Q: How do you explain the significance or importance of Earth Day to students?
Skylar: Here in Wisconsin, we have a special relationship with Earth Day through Gaylord Nelson, who served as governor before being elected to the U.S. Senate, where he championed the first Earth Day in 1970. This historical connection provides a hook for students to learn about the significance of Earth Day as both a turning point in our national conversation about the environment and an example of citizens making a difference through direct action. I want them to understand that individuals working together can leave a legacy that has an impact far beyond their expectations.
Jharna: I would explain the importance of Earth Day in an empowering way, helping students understand that their small contributions to the planet have a lasting impact. Encourage them to reflect on their daily routines — at home, in the classroom, and with friends — to identify habits that support a healthier planet. Have students focus on their local environment and consider actions they can take within their own communities. The goal is to make these activities manageable for teachers while fostering student accountability. By highlighting and celebrating students who go above and beyond in taking action, we create a positive and motivating atmosphere.
Engaging Students in Earth Science & Environmental Education
Q: What are some strategies to engage students in earth sciences and environmental education?
Skylar: My first answer to this question will always be to explore the topics through a place-based lens. As a starting point, you might ask your students how they define their local environment. I teach at the secondary level, so next I could ask students to explore local environmental concerns like the tradeoff between solar power and farmland or the preservation of a county park in the face of increased recreation use. At the primary level, I might start closer to home — what issues are we seeing in our schoolyard or neighborhood, and how can we learn more about them?
I would strongly encourage educators to take students outside as an engagement strategy, but I know this isn’t always practical. I’ve found that students love to explore the local to global scale of environmental education through Google Earth, especially if you can project it to the whole room. I was a geologist in my pre-teacher life, and nowadays, I really enjoy using the Rockd app to learn about the layers underfoot. These are just two examples of technology that can bring the outdoors into your classroom when you might not be able to explore someplace directly.
Jharna: To engage students in environmental education, it’s essential to provide a curriculum that feels relevant and accessible to them. Is the information structured and scaffolded in a way that meets their needs? Is it framed in a way that encourages action rather than fear? When I taught science and covered climate change, I noticed that much of the material had a negative tone, which made students feel uneasy. Instead, it’s important to present topics such as climate change, pollution, deforestation, and biodiversity loss in a way that informs and empowers students rather than overwhelms them.
Q: Do you have any special activities that you use in your classroom to celebrate Earth Day?
Skylar: At our school, we celebrate Earth Day as a day of service. We lean on existing community connections to be able to provide a variety of options for students, so they have voice and choice, and it feels like more of an opportunity than an obligation. (On the other hand, I’m a bit torn here because I do feel like we have an obligation to leave our spaces better than we found them!) Last year, we had one group of students picking up roadside litter in a local natural area while two groups were at our school’s outdoor learning center planting saplings and clearing out brush and invasive species.
What’s most important about these projects is that at the end, there is a tangible benefit that the students can see — bags full of trash, young trees, piles of brush. Many environmental projects lack immediate, clear benefits because the time scale is so long. It’s important for young people to see how their work makes a difference to keep them motivated to keep working in the long term, not just one day in April.
Jharna: A great Earth Day activity is to introduce friendly competition within the school community. Consider organizing a recycling art contest, a relay race using only recycled materials, or a community gardening event. These activities don’t have to be elaborate or require additional funding — they just need to be engaging and easy to implement, ensuring both students and teachers can participate with minimal preparation.
Integrating Earth Day Across the Curriculum
Q: How can teachers tie Earth Day into cross-curricular activities?
Skylar: We know that students benefit from cross-curricular lessons, and something I love most about environmental education is that it works so well as a framework for learning across all school subjects. In Wisconsin, our Wisconsin Standards for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability encourage an interdisciplinary approach that I think is helpful to review regardless of the state where you teach.
The historical context of Earth Day I described above is an example of a Social Studies connection, but students could also write up press releases or blog posts about their Earth Day work for English Language Arts. Life and Physical Sciences are easy connections to make — ecosystems and earth cycles can be demonstrated well in Earth Day projects. Students might design a public relations or awareness campaign for Art and Design, or simply create for the sake of creativity (click here for some fun ideas). It’s easy for Mathematics to become an afterthought in interdisciplinary studies— students can always calculate their carbon footprint or measure the amount of waste they collect — but incorporating ideas from Data Science could provide an antidote to those dull lessons, with students applying analytical thinking to environmental issues.
Jharna: Earth Day can also be incorporated into cross-curricular activities to create a school-wide impact. For example, students could participate in a scavenger hunt with clues linked to different subject areas. By the end of the day, they could piece together a puzzle or take part in an Earth Day celebration. Some of the most effective Earth Day initiatives I’ve seen have been integrated into arts, music, and even lunchtime discussions — showing that environmental education doesn’t have to be limited to traditional “core” subjects.
Resources for Teaching Earth Science and Environmental Education
Q: Where do you recommend teachers go to find more resources about environmental or climate education?
Skylar:
- The North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) is a good starting point, and they likely have a local affiliate in your state or province that can connect you with local resources (check here).
- In Wisconsin, PBS created a series of short videos showing the diverse impacts of a changing climate around the state for the Climate Wisconsin project. These videos are specific to our state, but I think they are applicable elsewhere, and similar projects are likely out there.
- In researching for this Q&A, I learned that the official Earth Day website has an extensive curriculum section as well.
- Finally, I’m a big fan of Open Education Resources (OERs), and would recommend that folks check out OER Commons for lessons and links. Initial searches for “environmental education” and “climate change” both turned up thousands of free resources created by educators.
Jharna: For teachers seeking ready-to-use, age-appropriate, and uplifting climate education resources, I highly recommend Earth Warriors. Designed by teachers for teachers, this curriculum focuses on empowering students with positive, action-oriented learning. If you’re looking to improve climate education in your classroom, check out our Teacher Training (CPD) and explore our free resources. Earth Warriors has already reached over 50,000 students, worked in 10 countries, and supported 10,000 teachers. We understand the challenges educators face and are here to help make environmental education seamless and impactful.
Resources to get started:
Skylar L. Primm (he/him) is lead teacher at Koshkonong Trails School, a project- and place-based school in Cambridge, Wisconsin. With over a dozen years of experience in environmental education, he serves on the board for the Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education and in 2021 was named their Formal Educator of the Year. You can keep up with his work at skylarprimm.com and contact him at pbl.skylar@gmail.com.
Jharna Jassal was born and raised in the United States where she first entered the realm of education by completing undergraduate studies in Elementary and Special Education and later a Master’s degree in International and Global Education. Having spent 10 years working in the education sector across a number of East Coast locations, Jharna recognized the need to close the achievement gap in the inner city. Since 2022, Jharna has been working with Earth Warriors to create climate education programs for 3–11-year-olds globally. This includes creating structured climate education learning material, designing and delivering climate education teacher training, and, most importantly, being an ever-present support system for teachers. She is now the Learning Manager for Earth Warriors, working in Botswana and Zambia and hopes to continue leading the curation and delivery of meaningful content for teachers and schools globally.
