Earth Month: Engaging Initiatives and Resources for Schools
April is Earth Month, the perfect time for educators to inspire students with hands-on environmental initiatives! Whether you’re just beginning your sustainability journey or looking to deepen your school’s impact, EcoSchools Canada offers a wide range of free action cards, challenges, and resources to help bring environmental learning to life.
Here’s how you can make the most of April and beyond:
1. Kickstart Earth Month with an EcoTeam meeting
An EcoTeam is a group of students, teachers, staff, and/or parents dedicated to sustainability initiatives at school. If you don’t have one yet, Earth Month is a great time to start. Meet to set goals, choose from 50+ EcoSchools actions, and plan upcoming activities.
Does your EcoTeam stand out? Nominate your EcoTeam for the EcoTeam Awards!
2. Take on an environmental challenge
Encourage your students to participate in environmental campaigns to build eco-friendly habits:
- GOOS Paper Day Contest: Learn about responsible paper use and promote effective ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle paper. Enter our contest for a chance to win an amazing prize.
- Waste-Free Lunch: Reduce waste by promoting litter-free lunches and improving classroom waste sorting. Use these Waste-free Lunch Tracking Sheets to count the number of waste-free lunches observed.
- Active & Sustainable Transportation: Walk, bike, or carpool to school to reduce emissions. Download our Pledge Template to keep track of the number of students and staff engaged.
- Global Action Days: Join a global movement with over 100 countries working together to fight climate change. Access free resources, educational materials, activity guides, and communication tools.
3. Plan an Earth Month event
Hosting an event helps build school-wide engagement. Here are some ideas:
- Earth Day (or week) assembly: Bring the school together for a special assembly featuring videos, or guest speakers on sustainability topics. Check out our website for upcoming and past environmental webinars.
- Community Clean-up: Organize a community clean-up day and track the collected waste. Use these data collection tables to organize and calculate your impact.
- Environmental Fair or Conference: Plan an Environmental Fair featuring student projects or host an Environmental Conference where students present workshops and hands-on activities.
4. Connect with the Land
Deepen students’ relationship with the land through mindful observation and reciprocal learning.
- Sit Spot: Cultivate awareness and well-being by regularly visiting one specific spot where students can sit, slow down, awaken their senses, and learn more about themselves and the local environment. Encourage students to document their experiences with this Field Journal.
- Land Recognition and Reciprocity: Touch and honour the land, root reflection and connect with Indigenous knowledge, culture, and relations. Check out this resource for foundational principles, best practices, and important concepts to support your learning cycle.
5. Track your impact and get recognized
EcoSchools Certification isn’t just about taking action, it’s about measuring your school’s environmental impact and celebrating progress. By tracking your efforts in the EcoSchools Certification Application, your school can earn recognition and inspire others to follow!
Learn more about our program, certification levels, and why you should certify.
Start your eco-journey today!
Ready to take action? Log into the EcoSchools Certification Application (it’s completely FREE!) to access action cards, resources, tracking tools and much more!