Project Learning Tree®
Project Learning Tree® (PLT) is widely recognized as one of the premier environmental education programs in the world. Through hands-on, interdisciplinary activities, PLT helps young people learn
how to think, not what to think, about complex environmental issues.
Read PLT's 2009 Annual Report Environmental Education for Grades PreK-12 Since 1976, PLT has provided the tools, training, and resources educators need to bring the environment into their classrooms and their students into the environment. PLT produces high-quality environmental education curriculum materials to help educators teach about both the natural and built environment—forests, wildlife, water, air, energy, waste, climate change, invasive species, biotechnology, biodiversity, and community planning, to name a few.
Learn more about PLT for grades PreK-8,
PLT for grades 9-12, and
PLT’s award program that recognizes outstanding educators for their commitment to environmental education, their exemplary use of PLT, and their exceptional teaching skills.
Training and Professional DevelopmentPLT’s 50-state network provides environmental education training and PLT curriculum materials to 30,000 PreK-12 educators every year through 1,500 professional development workshops held around the country.
Workshops train educators—mostly formal (i.e., classroom teachers), non-formal (e.g., staff at museums and nature centers), and pre-service (i.e., college students training to become teachers)—in environmental education, how best to use PLT curriculum materials with PreK-12 students in their own setting, and how to engage with (and draw upon) their community in learning about and taking action to address local environmental issues.
Communities in Action PLT doesn’t just increase student awareness of environmental issues through classroom studies. It helps students transfer their knowledge into positive environmental action in schools and communities. Our service-learning programs,
GreenWorks! and
GreenSchools!, provide grants and training for student-led investigations and community action projects.
Through
GreenWorks!, we provide grants up to $5,000 to schools and youth organizations for environmental projects. Students “learn by doing” through community action projects that they design to improve an aspect of their neighborhood’s environment.
A new national
GreenSchools! initiative is engaging students, teachers, school board members, maintenance staff, parents and community members in creating more green and healthy learning environments at school. PLT’s
GreenSchools! program provides students and teachers a set of environmental investigations for their school as well as grants to engage them with their community in service-learning projects to green their school.
Connecting Children to Nature For 30 years Project Learning Tree has been helping educators take their students outside to learn. In response to the growing interest in getting children outside, PLT is adapting some of its
PreK-8 activities for families and friends to use with kids while out for a walk in the woods to spark children's interest in the natural world and engage them in outdoor learning.
In addition, AFF’s Project Learning Tree is currently
developing issues education for other adults, such as local legislators, land use planners, and community leaders.
