Tree ID

Teachers need to fill student days with activities that are hands-on, related to the real world, encourage both cooperation and critical thinking, can be scaffolded to support higher level thinking, are adaptable to many learning styles, and connected to educational standards. A tall order! Luckily, many forestry education skills—like tree identification—fit this bill. Knowing the names of the trees isn’t the most important thing in the world; we can enjoy time in the forest and learn about forest ecology without knowing what things are called. But teaching your students how to use tools to identify trees is a rich learning experience and gives them a life skill they will use into adulthood.

LEAF offers different types of tools for identifying trees, and we encourage you to mix and match to find what works for you and your students. Our dichotomous key is the most classic tool, and is the best for connecting tree ID to literacy skills. This key works by asking a series of questions about the structure of the leaf/needle (or bud, in the winter), and helps the user slowly weed out “wrong” trees until they come to the one tree that fits. When students work in pairs, this process becomes an exciting practice in scientific discourse! Our dichotomous key and helpful terms sheet can be printed to use in the field, or you can use the online version for a more modern take. If you think students will need more instruction to be comfortable with the key, our Tree Identification Lesson can help. 

For more visual learners, image-based keys can be helpful. The Wisconsin DNR Division of Forestry offers the Forest Trees of Wisconsin guide (order here) as well as their Urban Tree Key, and LEAF staff often use both in our PD events. For a fun activity, have students use a visual key to find their initial guess, then use the descriptors in our dichotomous key to justify or correct their choice. 

LEAF’s Tree Identification Cards can be used in a variety of ways: print them to practice using a key in a low-stakes environment, attach them to a like tree in the forest if the leaves are too hard to see, or use them for quizzing if your goal is visual recognition. Though you can print the cards themselves from our Tree ID page, you can also borrow a set—along with most of the other tools mentioned above—in our new Tree ID Kit. 

Though knowing the names of trees isn’t necessary for appreciating our forests, teaching students to identify trees can open whole new levels of possibilities for your classroom. Learning about specific forest products and the role each tree plays in our economy, or how individual tree characteristics affect management decisions, or even how different trees will react to a future influenced by climate change are all “next level” concepts ready for tree-literate students to tackle.

Tree Measurement

At a glance, the process of measuring trees might seem mystifying. What’s with those strange yardsticks? And what in the world is DBH? But if you set your fear aside and let LEAF resources support you, you’ll soon find that tree measurement can become another part of your comfortable teaching repertoire.

Before you head out to the woods with your students, we recommend an annual re-watching of our tree measurement tutorial. This video walks you through the different tools involved and carefully displays how to use them properly. Teachers can even show the video to their students while they explore the tools in class, pausing frequently to look at the parts being described. Then, delve into LEAF’s Woods Worth lesson, which gets into both the theory and practice of tree measurement and offers printable versions of tools sized properly for student use. Or, if you want to borrow a set of tools to try, check out one of our Forestry Education Kits. Once your students are comfortable with measuring trees, they can move onto the next steps of using the data to calculate board feet of lumber and seeing how that applies to different types of forest products. We promise that some of your students who think they hate math will actually LOVE this real-world application!

While proper tool positioning is essential for accurate tree measurement, human error here can actually be a good teachable moment. Use discrepancies in your calculations as opportunities to understand the hows of the geometry involved and whys of the overall process. Extrapolate errors out to model how accuracy affects the bottom line on a timber sale. Or, have individual students use different types of tools (Merritt hypsometer or tree scale stick and clinometer for height, Biltmore stick and D-tape for diameter at breast height) and compare to see which is more accurate. 

Though tree measurement activities commonly fall into Ag Ed standards, we know there are teachers around the state who integrate the skill into many different content areas. We would love to hear how you use tree measurement with your students! Please email us at leaf@uwsp.edu to tell us about it.

School Forest Primer

LEAF Lessons

As you’re thinking about how to integrate forestry education into your curriculum this year, it might be helpful to take a step back and look at how LEAF’s K-12 Forestry Lesson Guides are organized. Did you know our curriculum has a unifying structure? All of the lessons in our guides fall under a continuum of four themes: What is a forest? Why are they important? How do we sustain them? What is the future?

These themes repeat across grade bands, giving schools an opportunity to connect to prior learning and build in complexity as students get older. For instance, Lesson Two in our grade band guides explores forest ecosystems. Kindergarteners learn basics about the parts of a forest, while high school students explore succession. Forest products and forest management are introduced and re-introduced in similar scales. And while our newly updated 4th grade guide stands alone in some ways with its focus on Wisconsin history, the lessons still fall within the four themes that direct our approach to forestry education.

Though LEAF lessons are designed to build continuity when taught as a unit, they can also be used as stand-alone activities to address individual concepts. To find activities that connect to specific standards, look at the Standards Addendum page of each of the guides.

Professional Development

Contact Us! 

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

Published for September 2024