WEBSITE: Nature Works Everywhere + Lesson Plans and Videos

[Ryan Goble]

I was hipped to this cool website by a scientist that works for the Nature Conservancy called Nature Works Everywhere. More from the site's about us page:

Nature: It’s more than just a faraway beach or mountain. It’s a fantastic factory that makes the building blocks of all our lives—food, drinking water, the stuff we own and the air we breathe. It makes amazing memories, and even protects us from floods and storms!

That’s why The Nature Conservancy and its 550 scientists have created a new initiative — Nature Works Everywhere — to help students learn the science behind how nature works for us…and how we can help keep nature running strong.

Nature Works Everywhere gives teachers, students and families everything they need to start exploring and understanding nature’s fantastic factory — videos, interactive games, and interactive lesson plans that align to standards.

Hosted by Nature Conservancy scientists, Nature Works Everywhere takes your class around the world to visit nature at its productive best — from coral reefs to bee gardens, from Maine’s snowy forests to Africa’s grasslands. We’ll be adding more lessons each year from around the globe on science and social studies topics that teachers can use as is or customize for their own classroom needs.

It also looks like they are working in collaboration with the Discovery Educator Network to craft student-friendly videos like this one "Pollinators - Putting Food on the Table."

Pollinators - Putting Food on the Table from Discovery Education on Vimeo.

In addition to the videos they are building a lesson plan bank that presently is focused on 6-8th Grade students but the lessons are easy to scale up or use in a high school setting. Here is a screenshot of the lesson plan page!

You can explore the full site at http://www.natureworkseverywhere.org