Into the Outdoors Lessons now available!

Time is Running Out!

School Forest Awards nominations are due January 24!

Each year, LEAF recognizes individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to school forest programs. These awards recognize individuals and organizations that have provided leadership and made significant contributions over a period of years to a local school forest registered through Wisconsin’s School Forest Program.

Nominate Someone!

Kits reminder: Reserve Early!

January is a great time to plan out your spring kit schedule! Reserve early, as we schedule reservations on a “first reserved first served” basis and many of our kits get booked up fast, especially around Earth Day in April. Don’t forget that all of our kits can be reserved up to a year in advance, so if any of your lessons this past fall were enhanced by a kit – or could have been enhanced by a kit if only it was available for the days you needed it - you can put those reservations in now, too!

Reserve a Kit!

Into the Outdoors Lessons Launch

During Forest Product Month in October 2024, Into the Outdoors aired four new episodes to celebrate the importance of forests and forest products in our lives.

LEAF created 10 lessons to support the Forest Products and Wood Education episodes. Lessons include everything synonymous with a typical LEAF lesson: background information, connections to Wisconsin State standards, detailed instructions and engaging activities, and suggestions on how to use the lessons with students outside the designated grade band.

Lessons supporting the Managing Forests for Multi-Use episode focus on the immense number of forest products that support us in our daily lives and how using forest products can help us sustain our planet. In the elementary lesson, Innovative and Sustainable Products, students examine sustainable packaging materials by reading an article about packaging innovations. The article, modified from a #forestproud article by the Society of American Foresters, informs students as they then design an experiment to test how well sustainable packaging products perform.

Middle school learners examine the properties and purpose of wood as a historical and contemporary building material in People Need Wood Products and, in That’s Made from Trees, high school students use the (free to download) book, Wood in Sport Equipment, funded in 2021 by the World Wood Day Foundation, to help them trace the journey of a recreational-use forest product from forest to finish.

The classroom video, From Forest to Paper: The Sustainable Journey of Everyday Products, supports both the elementary and high school lessons.

The Forest Products Lab episode explores the innovative ways forest products are being used to combat climate change and support healthy forests. The elementary lesson Wood: A Scientific Wonder – Forest Careers in Science and Engineering introduces students to Eloise Gerry, a pioneer from the the US Forest Services Forest Products Lab, before students are asked to explore forest careers in science and engineering using the Natural Inquirer Scientist and Engineering Cards (request your own set or borrow them from LEAF).

In Wood: A Scientific Wonder – Branching Out, middle school learners continue their examination of the characteristics and properties of wood, using the Wood Database – Wood Filter to learn how to differentiate between hard and soft woods and better understand how the properties of wood influence its use today and ensure it will continue to be a building material in the future. High School students consider the infinite applications of nanocellulose in Wood: A Scientific Wonder – Revolutionary Wood Resources and learn how this technology can be used as a climate solution.

The classroom video, Nanocellulose: Revolutionizing Materials with Sustainable Science supports the high school lesson.

All LEAF lessons created to support Episode 3 How Healthy Markets Sustain Forests require students to apply economic principles to the field of forestry. In the elementary lesson, Cost-Benefit Analysis of Play Structures, students compare the costs and benefits of a wooden play structure to that of a metal play structure. The middle school lesson, The Forest Marketplace, asks students to examine a specific marketplace scenario to better understand how sustainable forest management and strong markets for wood products conserve forests, benefit communities and fight climate change.

High school educators and students have two lesson options to consider. While both lessons help students understand the life cycle assessments of mass timber buildings, The Life Cycle of Wood has students compare a mass timber building to a similar building constructed of steel and concrete in Trondheim, Norway. Whereas The Life Cycle Analysis of Greenhouse Gas Emissions has students compare a mass timber building constructed in Denver, Colorado, to a steel and concrete building of the same model that was not constructed.

The forest supply chain classroom video supports all three lessons.

Kit Connections

Several LEAF kits can be used to support the new Into the Outdoors Lessons.

The Wood Identification Blocks Kit has samples of basswood, birch, red cedar, elm, hickory, pine, spruce, hemlock and white oak that can help students understand the difference between wood types and properties while they complete the 6-8 lesson, People Need Wood Products from Episode 1.

The Forestry Careers Kit – Cards provide a look into the vast number of sciene and engineering jobs and careers pathways related to forests and forest products. They are utilized in the elementary lesson, Wood: A Scientific Wonder: Forest Careers in Science and Engineering lesson from Episode 2

The Forest Products Kit can be used to support both the middle and high school Wood: A Scientific Wonder lessons. The Forest Products Kit contains a mix of forest product resources and tools.

The final episode of the series, Climate Adaptation and Forest Stewardship, and classroom video, From Forest to Home: How Sustainable Markets Protect Forests, include several connections to the LEAF lessons supporting the first three episodes. They also include three lessons that were not created by LEAF: 3-5 Trees: Nature’s Air Cleaners, 6-8: Exploring Biomass and Bionegineering – Renewable Energy from Natural Materials and 9-12: Sustainable Building with Mass Timber: Renewable Architecture Solutions.

LEAF hopes you will use the episodes and resources from the Forest Products and Wood Education series as a launchpad to the exploration of LEAF Field Enhancements from our K-12 Forestry Lesson Guides that will take students Into the Outdoors to learn!

Additional Wisconsin Forestry Videos

Looking for other forestry-related video resources to use with your students?

Discover Wisconsin has a nice 20-minute Forests of the Great Lakes Region - Conservation to Recreation video featuring a mix of history, forest products, and sustainable forestry.

LEAF's video library includes a variety of video resources, the most popular being our Tree Measurement tutorial.

The DNR has a robust YouTube channel with videos on a variety of topics. Browse the playlists or search "forestry" to see a host of forestry career and related videos.

Have a favorite Wisconsin forestry video you'd like us to know about? Send us an email at leaf@uwsp.edu.

Professional Development

In-Person Trainings

School Forest Foundational Planning | Feb. 11 | Stevens Point

Introduction to Forestry Education for the K-12 Classroom Workshop | March 5 | Cambridge

On-Demand Trainings

LEAF On-Demand, Online Offerings

Project Learning Tree On-Demand, Online Offerings

Introduction to Forestry Education for the K-12 Classroom Workshop

This workshop presents principles, activities and techniques to integrate hands-on forestry education into the K-12 classroom. Whether you're teaching about science, social studies, agriculture, mathematics, technology education, or ELA, forestry education has a role to play. A variety of ready-to-use activities will be supplied so teachers can integrate relevant lessons right away.

Cost: $50

Date & Time: 9:00 a .m. - 3:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Location: Severson Learning Center, Cambridge, WI

Farewell (for now) to Kirsten Held

The LEAF Program at the Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education is a proud partnership between UW-Stevens Point’s College of Natural Resources and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry.

This month LEAF staff bids farewell to Kirsten Held, our DNR liaison, as she heads into retirement. Kirsten has been involved in a wide variety of outreach and education efforts over her more than three decade career with DNR, including being part of identifying the need for Wisconsin-specific K-12 forestry education and the development of LEAF. One of her more recent projects was coordinating the Into the Outdoors episodes and lessons featured in this newsletter.

Kirsten Held devoted her career to sharing sustainable forestry with learners of all ages. Growing up on a farm taught her the importance of good stewardship of our natural resources and engaging with the woodlands on the family farm through the 4-H forestry program led her to choose forestry as a career while still in middle school.

Several forestry career exploration adventures solidified the decision, including the summer career camp at Trees For Tomorrow in Eagle River, WI. (The 2025 session scheduled for June 8-13 is now open to high school juniors and seniors for enrollment and Kirsten encourages your students to learn more about it!)

After earning her forestry degree, Kirsten worked in Alaska for 10 years where one of her accomplishments was partnering with the Alaska Department of Education and the University of Alaska Extension Forester to bring Project Learning Tree to Alaska. She also coordinated annual Arbor Day celebrations which earned an award from the National Arbor Day Foundation.

We asked Kirsten why she is so passionate about forestry education, and she shared the following thoughts.

"At the top of the list is the importance of our forests (rural and urban) to us individually (from the clean air and water we enjoy to the thousands of forest products we depend on daily) and collectively as they have shaped the cultural, social and economic fabric of our state and are essential to the high quality of life we enjoy in Wisconsin.

While I love connecting people of all ages with our forest resources, I especially enjoy helping K-12 students learn about the forests that cover nearly half of Wisconsin as both the students and the forests are continually evolving and changing.

Wisconsin students played a vital reforestation role in the 1900s and now our forests face new challenges from invasive species, development pressures, a decreasing workforce and changes in our climate, among others. The common solution is an engaged and knowledgeable public that understands the value of the forest resources for people and our impacts on the resources.

The skills in critical thinking, inquiry and collaborative problem solving your students are learning through visits to your school forest, LEAF lessons and Project Learning Tree activities are positioning them well to be our future leaders and citizens prepared to make educated decisions about the natural resources in Wisconsin.

Young people and natural resources are Wisconsin’s greatest assets and together we have the privilege of supporting the growth of both so they thrive and continue to support our state in the future."

We couldn't agree more. Kirsten, it's been an honor to work with you. You have been a guiding force and an important advocate in the LEAF Program partnership. We sincerely appreciate the time, attention, and care you brought to your work. And while we will miss you, we know you will continue to find ways to bring your passion to life in your retirement.

Have questions or need additional resources? Contact us at leaf@uwsp.edu. We are here to support educators and students with forestry opportunities.

Workshops

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Curriculum

Published for January 2025