With photographs, diagrams, and a helpful glossary, this introduction to soils describes their unique characteristics and diversity, the ecosystem services that soils provide, and their use and misuse.
PBS Learning Media
All resources from PBS Learning Media contain teacher support materials including videos, background reading, discussion questions, teaching tips, hands-on activities, student handouts, and more. Several of these have fully developed lessons plans and investigations that can be easily adapted for different grade levels. You’ll want to check these out!
The Nature Conservancy’s Nature Lab, in connection with PBS Learning Media, has created a series of complete soil lesson plans, including hands-on activities, for grades 4-8.
Soil4Teachers is a terrific resource for all science educators, full of lessons and activities for soil studies at all grade levels. Soils4Kids is a companion site for students, with many features you can use in the classroom. You’ll find soil songs, soil games, experiments, art projects, and a Sammy Soil coloring storybook.
Dr. Dirt offers a wealth of K-12 teaching resources for your soil unit. Make some layered dirt pudding, soil crayons, or dirt t-shirts!
Students can learn about possible careers in soil science at the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Then check out interesting scientist profiles at the Soil Science Society of America or soil explorers from the Smithsonian Institute.
WatchKnowLearn has compiled numerous soil videos for various grade levels
Lesson Plans and More
Agriculture in the Classroom has a collection of fully developed soil lesson plans that are ready for you to use with students. All lessons include hands-on investigations, student handouts and companion resources. Here are a few you may like to try:
Soil! Get The Inside Scoop is a series of lessons plans for grades 4-6 developed by the Soil Science Society of America. Each lesson contains a powerpoint presentation, activities, links and study questions.
Underground Adventures, from the Field Museum in Chicago, is an inquiry-based soil education unit that invites students to research soil ecosystems in their own neighborhoods. Students will establish a field site, keep a field journal, measure and record data, and study the relationship between the soil’s physical properties, environmental and human factors, and soil biodiversity. You can also take a virtual tour of the museum’s soil exhibit.
It can be eye-opening for students to study soils around the world. Help them discover more about soil diversity with these lesson about tropical soils, desert soils, and prairie soils.
Celebrate soils in your classroom with these six hands-on investigations developed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in connection with World Soil Day.
These five simple experiments from How Stuff Works will help kids discover soil properties through active participation.
Younger students observe the composition of soil and describe their findings in Dirt Detectives from PBS Kids or The Dirt on Soil from Kids Discover.
Erosion and Soil is a great classroom demonstration of the power of water on soil that encourages children to think like scientists and make hypotheses based on observation.