School Forest Education Plan:
Outline, Needs Assessment, and Samples
School forests are incredible education resources. However, often, they are not utilized to their full potential. A variety of reasons exist as to why this is true. One reason is that teachers, administrators, and the community have not determined how the school forest fits into the districts curriculum and how it can be used to enhance student learning. The school forest education plan is the tool to make these connections.
School Forest Education Plan |
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School Forest Needs Assessment |
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Sample Plans and Documents |
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Potential Education Plan Development Funding Source |
School Forest Education Plan
The school forest education plan outline provides an established, approved format for school forest education plan development. The outline was developed in collaboration with educators and administrators from across the state and was reviewed by outdoor education and resource management professionals. The document is available in MS Word or Adobe pdf format. The Word format allows you to type directly into the document once you have downloaded it to your computer.
School Forest Education Plan Outline
(MS Word)
School Forest Education Plan Outline
(PDF)
School Forest Needs Assessment
A needs assessment can provide valuable information on the
opportunities and challenges of using the school forest. Use the
following example as a guideline to develop your needs assessment to
address your specific needs. There are free on-line tools to help
you conduct your survey that make it very easy to administer and
tabulate the results of the survey. One example is
Zoomerang.
School Forest Needs Assessment (MS
Word)
School Forest Needs Assessment (PDF)
Sample Plans and Documents
The following sample education plans and supporting documents are provided as examples to follow while developing your school forest education plan. The education plans follow the format of the approved school forest education plan outline. Keep in mind that each school forest education plan will be unique depending on the characteristics of the school forest, the districts curriculum, the goals and emphasis of the school forest committee, etc.
Paul Brandt (Boscobel) School Forest
Paul Brandt (Boscobel) School Forest (PDF)
Rahr (Manitowoc) School Forest
Rahr School Forest Education Plan (PDF)
Deerfield School Forest
Deerfield School Forest Education Plan (PDF)
Elmwood School Forest
Elmwood
School Forest Education Plan
Please contact Gretchen Marshall at Gretchen.Marshall@uwsp.edu or 715-346-2633 if you have any questions or need assistance with your education plan.
Potential Education Plan Development Funding Source
The Wisconsin Environmental Education Board (WEEB) has set a priority to fund development of school forest education plans. A boiler-plate grant proposal is available. More information can be found on the WEEB website at: http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/weeb/grant-program/categories/index.htm