LEARN NC

K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Views of the National Parks

http://www.nature.nps.gov/views/

Provider: National Park Service


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This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.

This site, provided by the National Parks Service, offers virtual tours of twelve national parks. In these tours, users can view gorgeous photography, read information, and participate in interactive explorations. There are also knowledge centers to visit, which contain information about topics such as glaciers, volcanism, scientific method, and coastal geology. These centers provide photographs, maps, and written information about each subject.

In the teacher resource center,the site provides resources that have obviously been created with the needs of educators and an awareness of educational standards and practices in mind. This section includes an overview of how to use the site in the classroom, with features such as inquiry based and differentiated learning. It also provides information about national education standards for all four core content areas.

The site’s educational resources are grouped by topical modules, all of which are accompanied by sets of teacher resource materials, and some of which have lesson plans or curriculum guides. The lesson plans include essential questions, assessments, and ideas for differentiation. Materials such as blackline masters of worksheets, graphic organizers, and vocabulary games are available to download as PDF files. The site also offers templates to help develop your own lesson plans.