Program Information
Check out these webcasts and webinars to learn about pollinators, gardening, and conservation practices.
WEBCASTS
- Nature’s Partners: Pollinators, Plants, and People
CLICK HERE to watch a webcast from Austin, Texas at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, which is dedicated to preserving native plants and wildflowers and restoring the beauty and the biological richness of North America. Meet the pollinators and their plants and learn how people benefit. An all-star cast of scientists and educators explains pollination, plant-insect interactions, how to study pollinators, their importance to the food supply, and what people can do to help.
- The Insect Zoo in Your Schoolyard
CLICK HERE to watch “The Insect Zoo in Your Schoolyard,” a webcast from the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. to watch the streaming video and learn about pollination, pollinators, participatory science projects, the latest about monarch butterflies, and how to attract pollinators to your schoolyard.
- Native Bees, Honey Bees, Gardening, and More
CLICK HERE to watch a webcast from Washington Youth Garden at the U.S. National Arboretum. Tour of the Washington Youth Garden; learn about native and honey bees; discover information about beetles, bats, and other insect pollinators; and find out what’s cooking in Pollinator Kitchen and Café
WEB SEMINARS
- Designing, Planning, and Creating Schoolyard Gardens
CLICK HERE to watch a webinar, offered through the National Science Teachers Association, with ideas on how to get started and how to use an outdoor classroom to meet education standards.
Mike Hill, landscape architect with the USDA Forest Service, discusses how to get a schoolyard garden started, including deciding where to put the garden, determining how large it will be, dividing responsibilities for who will be involved in planning and planting, involving students, deciding what to grow, and tackling landscape challenges. Mr. Hill has been centrally involved in developing and caring for a garden at Bailey’s Elementary School in Fairfax County.
Martin Bomar, a parent volunteer at Ashland Elementary School in Prince William County, Virginia, and an employee of the USDA-Farm Service Agency in Washington D.C., discusses how gardens can be used for hands-on learning opportunities for young students. The school staff, students, and parents created an Earth Day Garden at Ashland Elementary. Since then, the garden has provided a growing collaborative, sustainable outdoor teaching environment to satisfy teachers’ and students’ quest for knowledge and provide continuous service-learning opportunities.
This garden evolved to ensure the outdoor area would support and enhance concepts within all six grade levels of Virginia’s Science Standards of Learning. Ten major areas of teaching emphasis were developed in the garden to accomplish this goal: food production, pollinator garden habitat, fruit production, water garden, recycling and composting, soil conservation, weather data recording, outdoor classroom, recreation and reflection, and a sensory garden. With the assistance of many stakeholders, within the school and from the school community, and with the complete buy-in by the school administration, students and teachers were quickly able to “dig in.”
- Schoolyard Garden Basics
CLICK HERE to watch this web seminar about schoolyard gardens. One way to help pollinators and reconnect today's children to the outdoors is through gardening. Schoolyard gardens can be outdoor classrooms where they hone their academic skills and nurture their innate curiosity and creativity. Eliza Russell and Nicole Rousmaniere from the National Wildlife Federation discuss essential features of schoolyard gardens. Principal Cindy Wrenn discuss how the garden was planned with an instructional focus and the ways it continues to be a central part of the K-5 curriculum.
- Standards by Studying Pollinators and Bees in the Field and Classroom
CLICK HERE to golearn how bees and other pollinators can help you teach science and meet standards in the field and classroom. Discover Life has several projects to understand plant-insect interactions designed so that everyone can participate and contribute to real science studies. Nature's Partners is an inquiry learning-based curriculum that can be use in the field or classroom.