Ibhan is currently a senior at the American School of Dubai. For one of his classes, the Self-Directed Project, he is focusing on promoting sustainable education within academic environments. As part of his work, he developed a guide which provides teachers with resources that combine traditional academic curricula and relevant sustainable themes into classroom lessons.
As sustainability is an important topic to inform youth on, it is essential that students are given the opportunity to learn about and tackle sustainable issues within the comfort of their classrooms. From hands-on activities and simulations to month-long research projects, the resources listed below enable teachers to best incorporate relevant sustainable themes into their classes. Do note that although this is already an exhaustive list of options spanning all academic disciplines and grade levels, there are several other resources online. This is a great starting point, but it is definitely worth researching other options too. With that being said, check out the resources below. They are all free for the public and able to be modified as needed!
Lesson Plans | Global Schools
- The global schools program supports sustainable education in various ways. They have designed over 60 lesson plans relating to many of the SDGs, and in multiple languages. These lesson plans are designed to be used for whole class periods, and also work amazingly well for intermediate and advanced World Language classes.
SDG Resources for Educators | UNESCO
- UNESCO has created a mass resource bank filtered by SDGs that provides educators with relevant articles, documentaries, data reports, and interactive classroom activities to focus their lessons on. These involve physical ones where students are able to move around the room, and more serious ones that require every student to think critically and reflect on what they have learned.
Teaching Activities | Carleton College
- This guide was developed by a group at Carleton College, and has published around 650 activities that can be filtered by subject (sociology, math, biology, geography, english, engineering, etc.) to best fit teachers’ needs. These have been directly tried and tested by professors and other faculty in their college classes.
Global Citizens for Sustainable Development | UNESCO
- Another guide created and published by UNESCO, this not only includes specific activities and lessons, but also emphasizes certain values and themes that teachers should be covering across all their lessons. It provides examples of past work too.
Sustainability Through Games | Games4Sustainability
- For teachers looking for a more immersive experience, this website publishes unique video games that emphasize major concepts across all SDGs, proving to be an enjoyable but also reflective experience for students.
Sample Student Activities | Project Learning Tree
- In a similar fashion to the resources above, PLT has outlined frameworks for sustainable curricula and showcased specific activities for teachers to use.
Activities | Sustainable Earth
- While this site provides many one-time activities, it also provides a layout for activities that can be conducted over numerous weeks that focus on similar topics, resulting in a more cohesive development of broad themes relevant to the course.
Lesson Plans for Teachers | Eco Schools
- These unique resources focus on specialized subjects such as marine life and ecosystems, provide options in other languages, and are also separated into distinct age groups, allowing teachers to find activities that best suit the needs of their classes.
I would strongly consider implementing some of the lessons and activities from these resources into your own curriculum! Inspiring our youth to be future leaders and changemakers cannot occur without quality education. Promoting sustainable learning within our classrooms would be one of multiple steps to accomplish this.
If you have any comments about any of the above resources, or questions on how to further integrate sustainability into your classroom or curricula, then do get in touch by leaving a comment or response below!
- - - - - - - -
** Create your free profile here and leave a response below! **
Publish with ISN - to share your story, thoughts or ideas with the ISN community, please send your article draft directly to our editorial team here, or email us at [email protected]