For Educators Overview
The wealth of themes explored in THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA offer an extraordinary educational opportunity for your classroom. The lessons and activities developed around the film look at the rich history of the national parks, the art and photography of the breath-taking geography that inspired so many people and the human story of politics and policy that shaped and continue to shape the parks today.
Filmmakers Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns with students from NatureBridge
Lesson Plans
The lessons on this site were developed to help teachers use THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA in the classroom. Activities are appropriate for grades 7-10 but are easily adapted to different age ranges. Many of the lessons incorporate video clips from the film as well as additional resources found on this site. All the lessons address national teaching standards listed within each plan.
"Day Trip" Activities
Because THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA is so rich in educational themes and we know that teachers have a limited amount of time, we have developed a series of quick, adaptable activities for classroom use. Each "day trip" contains a brief overview along with activity ideas you can use to create lessons tailored to your individual class curriculum and teaching style.
The Untold Stories Discussion Guide
The Untold Stories from America's National Parks initiative was designed to bring to light stories from the national parks focusing on the role of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in the creation and protection of individual parks and to engage new and traditionally underserved audiences in the educational richness of the national parks. The Untold Stories discussion guide will help you introduce students to a wide variety of history and stories representative of our diverse society and lead them on an exploration of our national parks as not just places that preserve our nation's natural and cultural heritage but sites that enrich lives, enhance learning and provide inspiration in an increasingly challenging and complex world.
Place-Based Digital Storytelling Modules
Here you will find eleven screencasts and associated quick-start guides offering hands-on training in place-based digital storytelling. Using themes woven into the film and highlighted in the lesson plans, these modules train teachers how to integrate new media, digital storytelling and online mapping projects in their curriculum to engage students in authentic learning.
The training modules are tiered allowing participants to choose their level of engagement: from simple uploading and geo-tagging of photos, to the Share Your Story media uploading tool, to creating, publishing, and geotagging personal digital stories. As the modules can be used separately or together, participants choose the appropriate level of engagement, given available skill level, time, and resources.
THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA and the associated educational materials offer a wonderful opportunity to explore place-based learning. Often explained as using "community-as-text" (as opposed to "textbook-as-text"), students study their connection to the natural world through real-life exploration of place and location and by delving into regional human-environment interaction. Through this authentic learning, students come away with an understanding of the role they can and do play in this complex system.
