Applying Educational Standards
Appling National Education Standards in your school garden is a great way to gather support for your project, legitimize it within the school's curriculum, and provide exciting alternatives to "traditional" classroom methods.
This page will provide you with links to national as well as state education standards for all topics: languages, arts, mathematics, physical education, sciences, and social sciences. Because gardening touches on so many subjects, it is possible to use your school garden for much more than just science lessons. This page also includes a few resources for getting started using education standards in the outdoor classroom.
Check out our Garden Classroom Resources and Science Page Downloads to access educational materials that educators from around the country have developed. Many of the resources from this page are used with permission of the School Garden Wizard, a joint project of the US Botanic Garden and the Chicago Botanic Garden.
National Education Standards
English Language Arts Standards
Foreign Language Arts Standards
Fine Arts Standards
Mathematics Standards
Physical Education and Health Standards
Science Standards
Social Sciences Standards
This link will take you to a page maintained by Education World that will let you view all national standards by topic and grade level.
Standards Table of Contents
State Education Standards
Using National Education Standards
Plant Content in the National Science Education Standards
by David R. Hershey This article makes suggestions about how to enhance science learning by making plant studies interesting and relevant to coursework.
Teaching With Plants
The School Garden Wizard has some ideas for applying National Science Standards to gardening activities in grades K through 8.