As long as your project includes planting a variety of native plants in your schoolyard, it will work with the unit. Your site can be lawn, covered in weeds/invasives, gravel, or even pavement. Projects that work with the unit include:

Pollinator Gardens

Wildlife Habitat Zones

Restoration of Native Ecosystems

Tiny Forests/Miyawaki Method

Butterfly/Bird Gardens

Container Gardening (if working on pavement)

Native Meadowscaping (with seeds)

Rewilding

Yes! It’s highly recommended that if you have no experience with any kind of native planting project, that you either:

1. Take a course. There are many free and paid ones available online, and ideally you can find one that is specific to your local area.

2. Find a volunteer expert partner. Find someone who can work closely with you to design and carry out the project, ideally being present on planting day and any other restoration days with students. This person could be a parent who has native planting experience, your school garden teacher, a member of the local native plant or Audubon Society chapter, a local Master Gardener or Master Naturalist or a local non profit.

You will need to secure some money to purchase plants, as well as other materials you may need (such as mulch). Your budget depends on the size of your restoration site and whether you’re using seeds for a meadow restoration (cheap!) or potted plants cost about $2-$5 each. Options for purchasing plants include asking your district to pay for them, applying for a small grant, asking a local native plant nursery or restoration non-profit to donate plants, or throwing a bake sale.

Since tools can be expensive, look into borrowing them from a local organization or from parents.

Purchase of the unit includes:

-Preparation Guide. Complete guide with everything you need to know to carry out a native planting project in your schoolyard using the Schoolyard Habitat Restoration Unit

-Teacher Guide. !13 detailed lesson plans that take 6-8 weeks of class time.

-Student notebook. All the handouts students need for the entire unit.

-PowerPoint. Each lesson has a PowerPoint to guide the hands-on, student centered activities.

-Assessments. The unit has three assessments and rubrics for grading.

-One-on-one Zoom call. When you purchase the unit, you will be invited to sign up for a one-on-one call with me where you can ask questions, tell me your ideas for a native planting project, and I can provide targeted support to your unique situation.

There is no one-size-fits-all science curriculum, however I believe that your students will find the lessons highly engaging and you will find it a joy to teach. It was developed over the course of 5 years with multiple rounds of iterative design, based on feedback from 3 Master teachers who reviewed it and 12 pilot teachers who tested it with their students. My curriculum design approach is grounded in NGSS Storylines, 3 dimensional teaching, Ambitious Science Teaching, and POGIL (process oriented guided inquiry learning). The majority of each lesson consists of students working in groups of 4 to complete an investigation or other hands-on activity (following a written guide) with the teacher acting as a facilitator (rather than a “sage on the stage”) moving between groups.

The unit will work with any size planting project! Your restoration site may be large enough for each student or pair of students to plant one plant, but you can work with smaller sites too! It’s really flexible.

Yes! This is a place-based unit that can be used ANYWHERE in the country. The way this works is you will create a set of Organism Cards (including plants and animals) found in your bioregion. The curriculum provides card templates and detailed instructions for creating these cards. The cards will be used by students throughout the unit and they are the key to localizing this unit. It’s a “plug and play” that works really well.

Yes! The unit will work with container gardening! For example, you can create a container garden that supports pollinators with flower seeds and native shrubs.

The curriculum is designed for middle school and aligns to grades 6-8 science standards for ecosystems. An adapted version for grades 4-5 is coming soon. It could be easily adapted for grades 9-10, as well.

“Nature’s Best Hope” by Doug Tallamy. This book will give you an understanding of the relationship between native plants, insect and bird populations, and ecosystem health and lay out how planting native plants in your schoolyard is a solution to the biodiversity crisis.