Tree Trails for Educators
The Tree Trails app and associated curriculum provide an excellent opportunity for students and teachers to explore forests and become more familiar with the trees in their community and on campus.
Curriculum modules and resources
Tree Trails offers a place-based learning experience for your students to get outside and interact with the trees on your campus or in your community. Using urban forestry education goals, Tree Trails guides educators in creating and incorporating a Tree Trail in their program.
The lesson series moves students through basic skills, like identifying and measuring trees, to more complex technical skills, like using GPS and investigating sustainable management and urban forestry topics. Final lessons culminate in designing and conducting a service-learning project, allowing students to apply their knowledge and master conservation leadership and communication skills.
Elementary lessons and modules
Download all ten lesson modules or find each individual lesson with handouts and links below.
Lesson 1: Mapping a Tree Trail
Lesson 2: Identifying trees
Lesson 3: Measuring trees
Lesson 4: Tree structures and function
Lesson 5: Benefits and values of trees
Lesson 7: Tree and forest health
Lesson 10: Student service leaders
Project Learning Tree elementary activity supplements
Project Learning Tree offers another set of curriculum resources in developing your Tree Trail. We have suggested PLT activities to use for each Tree Trails Lesson Module.
If you are not already PLT certified, visit the Texas PLT website for upcoming workshops.
One: Map a Tree Trail
Students will explore foundational concepts and skills in mapping and using geospatial technologies, allowing them to gain a greater understanding of maps, position, and tree distribution in their community.
Goal: Students will select a minimum of three trees for the Tree Trail.
PLT Connection: 21 Adopt a Tree
Two: Tree identification
Tree identification is a critical first step towards an understanding of ‘diversity.’ By learning the names of trees, we come to appreciate them.
Goal: Students will identify their trail trees and explain how identification relates to tree knowledge.
PLT Connection: 5 Poet-Tree, 64 Looking at Leaves, 68 Name that Tree
Three: Tree measurement
Tree measurement is fundamental to the practice of forestry. Foresters count trees and measure trees. With just a few basic measurements, we can assign values to trees and compare them to each other.
Goal: Students will measure trees and explain how measurement is used to place value on trees and forests.
PLT Connection: 67 How Big Is Your Tree?
Four: Tree structure and function
Trees are living organisms with many specialized structures – leaves, roots, wood, and the living cells that connect them. Understanding how trees are constructed and grow is essential to care for trees and calculate the benefits that trees provide.
Goal: Students will explain the structure and function of tree parts.
PLT Connection: 63 Tree Factory, 76 Tree Cookies, 79 Tree Lifecycle
Five: Benefits and values of trees
Advances in the science of urban forestry allow us to assign monetary values to a wide range of benefits that trees in urban areas provide. As trees grow, these values rise – the only part of the built environment of our cities that does so!
Goal: Students will determine the benefits of trees and calculate their value.
PLT Connection: 13 We All Need Trees, 30 Three Cheers for Trees!, 32 A Forest of Many Uses
Six: Diversity of species and ecosystems
Promoting ‘diversity’ is a basic principle of urban forestry. A diverse forest implies a more resilient forest, since disease or insect outbreaks likely won’t affect every tree all at once.
Goal: Students will evaluate how the diversity of species affects the ecosystem.
PLT Connection: 10 Charting Diversity
Seven: Tree and forest health
History has shown us the risk of planting too many of the same species in the urban forest. Cities and forests have lost many millions of trees to foreign or species-specific diseases and insect pests. Exotic tree species can sometimes invade our forest landscapes and crowd out native species.
Goal: Students will demonstrate ways to keep trees and forests healthy.
PLT Connection: 12 Invasive Species
Eight: Tree history
Trees fascinate us because the oldest among them span many human generations. Trees can be a living link to our past, or may be planted by the current generation as memorials to important events or people in the community.
Goal: Students will research the history of a tree(s) and make connections to the past.
PLT Connection: 95 Did You Notice?
Nine: Urban forestry
The trees around us – those that make up the ‘urban forest’ – are a reflection of the community itself. Cities often organize the protection, planting and care of trees in public spaces, through a Tree Board or other volunteer group. Tree City USA is one symbol of a community that cares about its trees.
Goal: Students will create a Campus Tree Trail Care Plan.
PLT Connection: 54 I’d Like to Visit a Place Where…, 74 People, Places, Things
Ten: Student service leader
Arbor Day is the celebration of trees where we live, work, learn and play. Communities set aside one day each year to plant and care for trees, usually on public property, such as a school or park. Students can provide the leadership for a project to plant or care for trees – either on school grounds or in the surrounding community.
Goal: Students will design and conduct a service learning project.
PLT Connection: 31 Plant a Tree, 34 Who Works in this Forest?, 60 Publicize It!, 96 Improve Your Place
Secondary lessons and modules
Download all eight lesson modules or find each individual lesson with handouts and links below.
Lesson 1.1: Mapping a Tree Trail
Lesson 1.2: Identifying trees
Lesson 1.3: Tree measurement
Lesson 2.1: Tree structure and function
Lesson 2.2: Ecological diversity and native species
Lesson 2.3: Tree and forest health
Lesson 3: Benefits and values of trees
Module 4: Student service leader
Getting started for teachers
Bringing trees and forests into the classroom shouldn’t be difficult. We want to support you to inspire students with Tree Trails lessons. Keep in mind:
Lesson order
Modules one through three focus on developing the skills needed to create the tree trail online and should be imple1mented in the correct order. Modules four through nine can be implemented in any order. Module 10 is a culminating service leadership experience that can serve as a master assessment at the end of a learning series.
Limited time
If you have limited time, start with the first three modules to establish minimum skills and understanding. Add Modules four through nine based on your available time and students’ topic interests. You can subtract or modify Module 10 to meet your students’ needs for service and leadership experience, such as including optional implementation projects, modified knowledge checks, or self-reflection activities.
Technology modifications
The curriculum includes built-in pre and post assessments within each lesson. These questions can easily be recreated in a digital quiz format or embedded into existing learning management technology.
Helpful tip: The curriculum provides associated data collection and student sheets. However, it may be helpful to create an electronic learning log using a flash drive or cloud software in order save data histories, trail details, and other work produced in the modules.
Modifying the data
The Tree Trails mapping program is user generated. Each tree and trail entered into the program is stored and saved unless a user changes or deletes it.
Anyone can modify the data entered into the application and replace historical data as soon as a user saves the changes. While this does make it easy for students to create, modify, or delete data while learning new skills, it can mean that data may be “missing” from the application due to accidental user error. We recommend you download student-entered data or use an external data log for trees specifically tied to student learning and longer-term study outcomes.
Mapping a trail
The following are resources to help get you started in creating a trail.
A digital tour of the mapping program provides an introduction to the tools in the application. Find it under the Help icon on the mapping application.
Download the Quick Start guide.
Download the Individual and Community Guide to find the steps to create your trail online.
Troubleshooting the app
While the application is generally easy to use, it does take a little training. We recommend testing the app on your own and familiarizing yourself with its buttons and features before beginning a lesson with your students.
Helpful tip: The online and mobile application interfaces are slightly different and are subject to occasional errors. For questions or issues concerning the Tree Trails application and features, contact [email protected] for support.
Need additional information? We’re here to help!
Contact us to request an in-service training on Tree Trails curriculum.
