Education
We can provide specimen images if you contact us with specific requests.
Welcome to the Rocky Mountain Herbarium's K-12 education resources.
The lesson ideas and resources provided here are just the beginning of our commitment to make the RM accessible to students and educators. To make these resources as useful as possible, we need your input! Please let us know what resources are of interest and use in your classroom, and we will work with you to make them available.
Classes are always welcome at the Rocky Mountain Herbarium. We will work with educators in all fields to meet their students’ learning goals. Click here to contact us.
Request a Classroom Kit
The purpose of the kit is to provide a resource for educators who are interested in bringing some aspects of the Herbarium into their classrooms. You can find scanned copies of plant specimens, grass seeds, identification keys, books, a plant press, and other resources to support student exploration. There are some suggested lesson plans and progressions with connections to the Next Generation Science Standards included as well. These plans are only a suggestion. Our hope is that you use these materials in a way that best supports your unique classroom and collection of learners. We hope that however you use them, students can become curious about the biodiversity and richness of plants in Wyoming, the Rocky Mountains, and throughout the world.
The creation of this educational material was funded in part by a private donation to the UW Biodiversity Institute.
Lessons
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in Google Drive
General Resources — Start Here
Here you will find images of plant specimens, a simple key to major plant groups, and other materials that are useful to multiple lessons, and for your own purposes.
Cheatgrass - A Challenging Visitor to Wyoming
Grades 3-5
Standards-based lessons lead students to address the question "Why has cheatgrass spread so far in Wyoming since the early 1900’s?" Compare the traits and adaptations of cheatgrass, an introduced species, to those of other Wyoming species, and make connections to specific environments, human behavior, and your own community.
Build Your Own Herbarium
All grades
Collecting and maintaining plant specimens in a herbarium is a means to enhance and enrich learning opportunities around plant form and function, adaptations, habitat requirements, and the effects of land use and climate change on plant distribution. Use the supplies in our kit to create or expand your herbarium.
Seed Growing Lesson
All grades
Use western wheat grass (our state grass!) seeds to design a variety of experiments to collect data and support arguments about plant growth requirements. Lesson ideas are available here; contact us to request seeds.