Place-based study of the Hudson can help students meet learning standards in engaging fashion. The Hudson River Estuary Program has created interdisciplinary lessons that use the river as context to build understandings and skills required by Common Core and New York State standards. Recognizing that teachers are pressed for time, the lessons are easy to prepare and implement.
These lessons are all available for download from the World Wide Web free of charge. Select individual lessons to support study of English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies, or assemble a collection of them to create a Hudson River unit. Content covered in a lesson focused on one set of skills is often reinforced in another lesson aimed at a different skill set.
The Estuary Program’s offerings are intended for kindergarten through grade 7, but it has also partnered with other groups – New York Sea Grant, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and Teaching the Hudson Valley among them – to develop a full range of lessons and curriculum units for K-12 study of the Hudson.
For more information, visit http://www.dec.ny.gov/education/25386.html