Did you know? KAEE offers a variety of free resources easily accessible from our website at kaee.org/the-tree! The KAEE Teaching Resources for Environmental Educators (TREE) was developed to serve as a means for connecting formal educators with professionals who can assist with the integration of environmental concepts into all content areas.
Within this portal you'll find Kentucky Academic Standards (KAS) resources, KAS correlated units of study based on environmental education, connections to environmental educators across the state, a database of funders focused on environmental education for
teachers, and more.
Some of the resources you’ll find within this portal are EE Units that have been designed by environmental educators and broken out into grade level categories (K-12th grade). In 2016, KAEE began the work of developing workshops that were correlated to the Kentucky Academic Standards (KAS) for science. We quickly realized the value environmental education offers teachers when it comes to KAS, and we wanted to do more. KAEE invited environmental educators across the Commonwealth to collaborate on this project, building EE units entrenched in the KAS for classroom teachers. We worked with formal and non-formal educators, training them to read and understand KAS for Science, and giving them the tools they needed to develop these EE Units of Study.
Under the EE Resources section, you can find Correlating Resources, Three-Dimensional Tasks, and Workshop Agendas. Environmental education experiences are highly suited to support NGSS and utilize the three dimensions of science. Our team has put together presentations and resources outlining this connection. These resources provide background knowledge on NGSS, our process for correlating, and past presentations supporting the connection between EE experiences and the three dimensions.
KAEE also specializes in training facilitators to deliver EE workshops that are correlated to KAS for science. If you're wondering what a KAS EE workshop might look like, take a look at the past agendas in the TREE. KAEE is here to connect you with a facilitator that will work with you to design a workshop to meet the needs of your school or district. Contact brittany@kaee.org for more information. You can also find an interactive facilitator location map for our state and a database of EE funding opportunities in the EE Connections section.
We hope you glean great ideas and useful tools from the resources you find within the KAEE TREE!