Learn some creative ways to integrate the Chesapeake Bay and environmental issues into your classroom lessons. Search through the Bay Backpack's books, multimedia, curriculum guides, individual lesson plans and online data sources about the subjects you are teaching in class.
Check back often for new and innovative resources to help you teach environmental topics.
Get your students' feet wet and hands dirty. Use the Bay Backpack to find a place to take your students on a field trip to learn about the Chesapeake Bay and its streams and rivers.
Search our database of field studies to find a location near you, or read our blog entries about field studies taking place at schools throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Prepare yourself to teach about the Chesapeake Bay and environmental issues, from climate change to water pollution.
Use the Bay Backpack training calendar to find an upcoming training opportunity near you.
Looking for funds to build a schoolyard habitat or provide your students with a field study? The Bay Backpack includes lists of grant opportunities so you can find the right grant program for you.
Before you apply, check out our grant writing tips to learn how you can strengthen your proposal.
Amazing Oysters Pop-Up Reef Lesson
One mature oyster can filter up to 60 gallons of water a day and oyster reefs provide vital habitat for hundreds of bay critters. For the same amount of space, oyster reefs can have 50 times the surface area of a flat bottom. A great starting point to study oyster reefs is to use the Amazing Oysters educational activity. In this lesson, your students will construct their very own little ecosystem reef. [Read more]
Shoot and Share your Outdoor Moments
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is encouraging everyone to get out into nature and see some wildlife this summer with their Let's Go Outside Campaign. Getting outside is a great way to create family memories to last a lifetime. More likely than not you will shoot pictures of these moments, so now you can share them online through Fish & Wildlife's new Flickr group, Let's Go Outside. [Read more]
Why Teach About Sea Nettles?
Sea nettles (Chrysaora quinquecirrha) are the most abundant jellyfish living in the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries. These stinging jellies have a smooth, milky white bell that usually grows to about four inches in diameter. Why should YOU teach about sea nettles? Sea nettles have very particular habitat requirements making them a great critter to investigate in your classroom. [Read more]
Bay Plates for Bay Education
The recovery of the Chesapeake Bay - and the future health of our environment, economy, and communities - depends on an environmentally literate and engaged citizenry. Through its environmental education programs and partnerships, the Chesapeake Bay Trust seeks to build a K-12 educational system in Maryland and the region that provides all students with the knowledge, intellectual skills, attitudes, experiences and motivation to become better stewards of the environment. [Read more]
Want to know more Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences? This short video will give you the lowdown.
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FieldScope: Explore this interactive mapping system.
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Green School Program: Ways to make your school earth friendly.
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No Child Left Inside: Learn about this exciting program.
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CBIBS Curriculum: Use real-time data to teach the Bay.
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United States Global Change Research Program
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National Science Teachers Association (NSTA)
