SLEWS

SLEWS Habitat Restoration

Curriculum

We are excited to share the resources developed in collaboration with SLEWS teachers, mentors and partners.

These curriculum lessons for your classroom are designed to follow the SLEWS restoration cycle and meet California State Science Standards. While the bulk of the lessons themselves take place in the classroom, they will necessarily follow or be followed by experiences in the field.

The SLEWS Environmental Science Curriculum includes multi-day lessons with labs, activities and supporting multimedia. This is a curriculum for teachers interested in using restoration projects as a basis for standards-based learning in the classroom. It is a series of stand-alone lessons that, if strung together, can become the foundation of a biology or environmental science course rooted in real-world experience.

The Science Writing Prompts are single-day prompts designed to prepare students for specific SLEWS field days while encouraging thoughtful science writing. Graphs and media also accompany the prompts. They were created through a year-long research project in collaboration with SLEWS teachers and the UC Davis School of Education.

The original classroom companion to the SLEWS program, Workbook: A SLEWS Curriculum, provides background readings on ecological restoration, plant communities and wildlife in the California Central Valley, and measuring success of restoration through monitoring. Each chapter includes activities and extensions to connect concepts to real life situations in students' own neighborhoods as well as your class' SLEWS restoration project.