Integrating environmental education into the curriculum through environmental community service learning

The goal of environmental education is to increase individuals' ecological knowledge, awareness of associated environmental problems, and motivation to evaluate and implement solutions. This project combined the concepts of environmental education with community service learning to create a new method of curriculum integration: environmental community service learning. The California state standards for environmental education, service learning, language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies were integrated into four thematic units using the teaching methodologies of cooperative learning, authentic assessment, and reflection. The integrated, thematic units of this project could be used by educators in a multi-disciplinary, team teaching scenario on in a single classroom setting as either sequential, thematic units of study or independent activities.