Focus on Grades 1 through 4 Date: February 23 or March 9, 2010 Location: Pennsylvania Department of Education Honors Suite, 1st Floor 333 Market Street, 8th Floor, Harrisburg, PA 17126 Registration 7:30-8:00 Starting/End Times: 8:00 AM — 4:00 PM

A new professional development workshop for teachers of grades 1^st through 4^th is being offered through the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Office of Environment and Ecology.  The workshop will cover living and nonliving systems (habitat, simple ecosystems, soil, etc.) adaptation, change over time, and real vs. make-believe.  The workshop will connect non-fiction reading books, manipulatives, integration techniques, and hands-on inquiry based activities written for this program to address the environment and ecology standards and the Science, Technology and Environment and Ecology Assessment Anchors.  Teachers will receive up to thirty non-fiction and 10 fiction reading books, puppets, two reading mats representing either the forest, pond or farm, a newly developed standards-based unit with lesson plans and activities.  Participants will also receive the newly developed national early childhood activity guides for Project Learning Tree and Project Wild. In total each teacher will take back to his/her classroom over $600 worth of materials for their students.

PLEASE NOTE: WORKSHOPS ARE LIMITED TO TEACHERS, GRADES FIRST THROUGH FOURTH, IN IU15.

PA CleanWays and Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful are inviting all Pennsylvania schools and school districts to join in the exciting and renewed Pennsylvania Litter Free School Zone program.  Recently announced, PA CleanWays and Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful have formally joined forces to promote illegal dump cleanups, anti-litter education, and beautification projects to make their work with local partners and volunteers more effective.  Litter Free School Zone

The Chesapeake Bay Program is happy to announce the launch of BayBackpack.com, an online resource for teachers and environmental educators to engage students in hands-on learning about the Chesapeake Bay and its local waterways. Bay Backpack provides educators with the necessary resources to give their students a Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (MWEE), which are extensive projects that allow students to gain a deep understanding of environmental issues in the Chesapeake Bay and its local streams and rivers. To learn more about Bay Backpack, visit www.baybackpack.com . Interested educators can also follow Bay Backpack on Twitter @baybackpack to receive additional education-related news and resources.

In his landmark book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv called the growing isolation of Americans from outdoor experience “nature-deficit disorder.” Louv's book explored how the destruction of natural landscapes by urban sprawl, community design that denies access to nature, and the explosion of electronic distractions are cutting contact with the natural world from American childhood.

In March 2007, Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell convened a two-day conference to address these trends. This first-of-its-kind exchange on reconnecting Pennsylvanians with the outdoors assembled experts and organizations with various perspectives on the relationship between people and the outdoors. Leaders from conservation groups, government, business, health care, recreation, academic institutions, and local municipalities sought strategies to encourage meaningful contact with the natural world and physically active lifestyles.

Governor's Outdoor Task Force Report (PDF)