This document provides guidelines for developing international environmental education curriculum. It discusses defining environmental education and its objectives to develop environmental literacy. It emphasizes teaching awareness, knowledge, attitudes, skills, and participation. When addressing issues, teachers are encouraged to consider relevant problems and their appropriateness for the grade level. The document also provides examples of curriculum concepts, learning outcomes, activities, and assessments focused on topics like tide pools, food webs, and zonation. It discusses integrating environmental education throughout curricula or using separate courses.

1. Guidelines for International
Environmental Curriculum
Development
Dr. Gloria Snively
University of Victoria

2. Schools in a World of Change

3. What is Environmental Education?
Environmental education is “a process aimed at developing a
world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the
total environment and its associated problems and committed
to work individually and collectively towards solutions of
current problems and the prevention of new ones.”
-The Tbilisi Declaration, 1977

4. What makes a person
environmentally literate?
Environmental Education stresses five objectives to help students
become environmentally literate. These include:
• Awareness
• Knowledge
• Attitudes
• Skills
• Participation

5. Questions to Think About:
When addressing environmental issues, teachers are encouraged to think about
five questions.
1.What environmental problems are confronting the community? The
country? The planet?
2.Which problems are most significant to the community? The students?
3.Will the students be able to solve the problem, or contribute towards solving
the problem?
4.What problems are appropriate for the grade level (the age level)?
5.What knowledge, skills and attitudes do the students need to have so they
will be able and motivated to work towards solving the problems?

6. Seashore

8. Observing Tide Pools up Close

9. Tide Pool Sculpin

10. Sunflower Star

11. Purple Shore Crab
Hermit Crab

12. Sea Urchin
Sea Anemone

13. Purple Shore Crab
Who’s Eating Who?
Sea Star Anemone

14. Students Collecting Plankton

15. Diatoms
Animal Plankton

16. Giant Acorn Barnacle

17. Crab with eggs

18. Plankton Drawings

19. Sound Map
Trust Walk
Blindfolded

20. Sensory
Experiences

26. Barnacles at High Tide Barnacles at Low Tide

27. Clams at High Tide
Barnacles at Low Tide

30. Zonation

31. Beach Transect

32. Zonation Bulletin Board
Zonation Dock Pilings

33. Netting and identifying
fishes was exciting
Exploring tidal pools
Teacher Jung Mun Kim (South Korea)

34. Having Fun
Sand Sea Turtle

35. Roleplaying Sea Animals
Who is the best one in the underwater world?

36. Language Arts
Reading Books
Marine Newspaper

37. Exhibition
Distribution of sea organisms on Jakyark Island
Sharing maps
Classifying

38. Rediscovery
Camp

39. Connecting
with
Nature

40. Connecting
with elders
and culture

41. An Octopus
for Dinner

42. Learning Cultural Songs and Dances

43. Spirit Spot

44. Program
Storm Drain

45. of the
Schoolgrounds
Greening

46. Big City Schools
(Toronto)

47. Small Town Schools (Kelowna)

48. Planting the first trees
Learning to Mulch

49. Collecting and Identifying Insects

50. Swallow-Tail Butterfly /
Caterpillar
Choke-Cherry Flowers turn to Berries

51. Building Birdhouses
Attracting Birds

53. Five Years Later

55. Celebration

56. Classroom
Salmon
in the

58. Collecting and Identifying Invertebrates

59. Rubber Ducky Races

60. Beaver Lake Station A
(Bridge 30 m Downstream)
Colquitz River
April 21, 1997

61. Measuring PH and Dissolved Oxygen

62. Quick Death

63. Strawberry Vale Community School

65. EthnobotanyEthnobotany
Ethnology –Ethnology –
The Study of PeopleThe Study of People
Botany –Botany –
The Study of PlantsThe Study of Plants
Plants and PeoplePlants and People
The Study of the Interactions BetweenThe Study of the Interactions Between

66. Objectives
•Developing a Sense of Wonder
•Exploring Environmental Education
•Honouring and Sharing Cultural Backgrounds
•Development of School Gardens and Outdoor Learning Areas
•Supporting First
Nations Education
•Cross Curricular
Integration
•Developing an
Environmental Ethic

67. Activity I Guest PlantsActivity I Guest Plants
•Observe & Journal
•Question & Study

68. Creating a School Herbarium

69. The First Component

70. Partnerships

71. Helping Hands

72. The Frog Watching Platform

73. Stream
Keepers
Program

74. Year 3
Fund Raising Continues

75. The Plan

76. The Trail to the Pond and
our Future Native Plant Garden

77. The Trail is Built
One Bucket at a Time

78. Planting Day
In the Rain
In the Mud

79. The Learning Continued Too

80. Outdoor Inspiration

81. A Place for the Arts, Sciences, and
Discoveries of All Kinds

82. Traditional Ecological Knowledge
For Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal
To Understand and Appreciate the Past

83. TEK
Seasons, Harvesting, Managing

84. Activity IIIActivity III
CordageCordage
PeelingPeeling
Willow BarkWillow Bark
Twisting the Strands
Willow Cord

85. The Garden In Action

87. Observing the Estuary up close

88. Eelgrass Meadows

89. Herring Eggs on Cedar

90. Counting Eelgrass in a Grid

91. Sorting and Planting Eelgrass

92. What Lives in Eelgrass Meadows?
Using a seine net to go fishing

93. Invite a Scuba Diver

94. Observing Marine Animals
Up Close

95. Building a Working Model
of the Bay
What happens if pollutants get into the estuary?

96. Integrating Reading, Writing and Art

97. Reef Keepers

98. Mapping Eelgrass Beds
Along the Coastline

99. Effective Environmental
Monitoring Programs
• Teach data collection skills: photographs,
sketches, journals, population counts, pH,
oxygen counts
• Engage students in authentic scientific research
• May involve sounding the alarm
• May involve action
• Prepares students for full, responsible adult
membership in society
• Address critical, relevant questions
• Teach observation as the basis of monitoring

100. Junior Ambassadors of the Ocean

101. Teacher Education

102. Understandings
(knowledge concepts)
The key concepts, the big ideas of a given topic.
Concepts are not the same as facts.
Concepts are highly generalized abstractions.
The concepts serve as the basis for each lesson.
The concepts form threads which run through the curriculum
package.
Concepts can be organized into increasingly more complex
ideas.

103. Concepts that focus
on basic seashore relationships:
Primary Grades 1 - 2 - 3 :
Tide Pool Communities
•organism •plant eater •meat
eater
•tidal cycle •tidal pool •needs
•habitat •care of
animals
•wants
Intermediate Level 4 - 5 - 6- 7:
The Rocky Shore
•food chain •tidal
cycle
•resources
•adaptation •cause and
effect
•pollution
•endangered
species
•zonation •conservation
Upper Level 8 - 9 - 10: Global Marine Ecosystems and Resources
•ecosystem •endangered species •biodiversity
•populations dynamics •global warming •bisphere
•CO2 emissions •greenhouse effect •bio productivity
•inter-connections •free trade •wealth distribution

104. Concepts that focus
on Food Relationships
Grade 1-2
At high tide, seashore animals move about in search of food.
Grade 3
Food energy flows from the prey to the predator.
Grade 4
Food energy flows from one living thing to another in a series of steps called a “food
chain”.
Grade 6
Animals have special adaptations to find food, and protect themselves from predators.
Grade 7
Interlocking food chains form a food web.
Grade 9
Food webs are part of every ecosystem.

105. Learning Outcomes
The learning outcomes state the objectives of each lesson.
They include the key concepts, the big ideas of a given topic.
They include the inquiry skills and participatory activities used
to study a given topic.
They are observable outcomes.
They provide ways of measuring or evaluating outcomes.

106. Writing Learning Outcomes
Words Open to Many
Interpretations:
Words Open to Fewer Interpretations
•to know
•to understand
•to appreciate
•to grasp the significance of
•to believe
•to have faith in
•to write
•to identify
•to differentiate
•to construct
•to list
•to compare
•to predict
•to infer
•to classify
•to measure
•to build a model
•to photograph
•to draw a picture
•to dramatize

107. Food relationships
Grade 4 - 5 - 6
Key Concept:
Food energy flows from one living organism to another in a series of steps called a
“food chain”.
Learning Outcomes
• given a list of seashore animals, draw a food chain consisting of five organisms
• using picture cards and arrow cards, show a food chain for a tidal pool
• role play (dramatize) a tidal pool food chain
• research and write three food chains for the open ocean
• draw a diagram of ecological food relationships in the bay (food web)

108. Skills
After completing this environmental education program, students
will be able to:
• predict how threats to marine resources will affect them
personally. Their community?
• measure the temperature and salinity of a tidal pool.
• graph the changes in water quality in an estuary over the past
10 years.
• list arguments for and against free trade.

109. Attitudes
After completing this environmental education program, students
will be able to:
• describe how they feel about the possible extinction of blue
whales.
• describe and justify their own attitudes about drift net fishing.
• describe how people’s attitude toward estuary conservation
vary.
• write how they feel about a new law that would limit harvests
and protect fisheries.

110. Participation
After completing this environmental education program,
students will be able to:
• list rules and implement a plan for minimizing destruction of
marine animals during a fieldtrip
• in specific situations, identify a positive course of action
• develop and implement a plan for school recycling
• organize and implement a beach clean-up

111. High Tide, Low Tide
(grade 1 - 2 - 3 - 4)
Knowledge Concepts
1. Twice each day the tides rise and fall on our coastline.
2. To survive, seashore animals must keep from drying out in the hot sun.
3. At high tide, seashore animals move about in search of food.
4. Tidal pools, under seaweeds and under rocks provide protection from
predators, and from the hot sun.
Learning Outcomes
After completing this EE program, students will be able to:
• given a set of pictures, identify high tide and low tide at the seashore
• describe how seashore animals behave at high tide and at low tide
• draw a picture to show how seashore animals keep from drying out at low
tide.
• dramatize predator-prey relationships
• dramatize how seashore animals keep from drying out at low tide.

115. Tidal Pools - Grade 4
Understandings (Knowledge Concepts)
1. A tidal pool is a pool of water left on a rocky shore when the tide goes
out.
2. Tidal pools provide shelter for plants and animals that cannot stand
exposure to drying out during low tide periods.
3. Every tidal pool contains a community of plants and animals.
Learning Outcomes
The students will be able to:
1. at the seashore, observe and draw a tidal pool,
2. identify organisms in a tidal pool,
3. count and record the population of animals and seaweeds in a tidal pool
4. describe and map a tidal pool.
5. create a graph of animals in a tidal pool.

116. Clue Cards

117. Octopus Cards

118. Food Web Game

119. Classification Game

120. Zonation: Grade 5 - 6
Knowledge Concepts
1. Zonation is the arrangement of plants and
animals in horizontal layers on the shore:
Spray Zone, High Tide Zone, Middle
Tide Zone, Low Tide Zone.
2. The tides create the conditions that cause
zonation.
3. Although zones overlap, each zone is
home to a different collection of plants
and animals.
4. Plants and animals are adapted (or
equipped) to live in certain population
zones on the shore.

121. Learning Outcomes
for the concept of Zonation
• collect and record data along a
transect line
• after listening to a story about
seashore animals, identify
organisms in each tide zone.
• draw a picture or create a mural
showing zonation on a shore.
• infer how organisms are adapted to
live in each tide zone Mapping Zonation

122. Guided Fantasy:
Voyage of the Sculplin II Submarine

123. Zonation Data
and Tidal Zones

124. EE is Interdisciplinary

125. EE Curriculum
Development
Flowchart

126. The Integrated Method –
Environmental Education Throughout Curriculum
Pros
• encourages EE learnings and problem solving across the curriculum
• fewer resources are needed (don’t need an EE specialist or a separate
textbook
• many supplementary resources exist
• allows all students at all grade levels
• when done on a large scale, can continually reinforce and build upon key
environmental concepts and skills
Cons
• EE learnings can be diluted to fit the objectives of language arts, art, etc
• requires extensive teacher training, teachers don’t have EE qualifications

127. The Block Method –
Creating Separate Environmental Education Courses
Pros
• easier to implement as a single subject
• allows teachers to present concepts t hat build throughout the course
• easier to evaluate as a separate subject
• can achieve greater depth and comprehension
Cons
• needs trained EE teachers with more in-depth knowledge
• not as easy to see the connections with other subjects
• may limit the number of students exposed
• may cause some teachers to assume that EE is “not my responsibility”

128. Credits
Background art used with permission from artists Wendy Tretheway and
Eleanor Duncanson and from Environment Canada.
Graphics by Irene Doerksen.
Material by Gloria Snively.