Standards Mapping
These lesson plans are blueprinted against the Colorado Department of Education Standards and CSAP.
The criteria for selecting lesson plans included following the standards developed by the Colorado Department of Education. As teachers, educators, and mentors, it is important to follow the standards so that students obtain skills necessary for future development and success. A priority was to select lesson plans that used an inquiry framework. Schools have moved away from memorization of facts and now have a goal for students to be involved in learning and drive activities and steps in the learning process.
This includes:
Ask questions and develop hypotheses
Select and use appropriate tools to collect data
Identify sources of error and bias in investigations
Graph and /or display data in a variety of ways
Interpret data and draw conclusions
Communicate and revise scientific thinking
Although the focus is on science, these lesson plans integrate a variety of subjects including math, language, and social studies. Students must be able to follow the steps provided as well as be creative in solutions and interpretations and be able to carefully communicate their findings. Developing critical thinking skills is vital. By providing lessons plans that use an inquiry based framework, we hope that students are better able to understand how the environment impacts our health, identify and create solutions to environmental problems, and make informed decisions every day to improve our environment.
The CSAP Table allows you to see each lesson plan and what standards each lesson plan covers. If you need to address or teach a specific standard, look at the vertical heading of the table that lists the standards and simple look across the row to identify all of the relevant lessonplans. Each lesson plan is hyperlinked so simply click the lesson plan and you will be redirected to the full lesson plan package.
The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) Table is formatted in a similar way to the CSAP Table. All of the CDE standards are listed vertically and displayed horizontally are the lesson plans.
Both tables are also organized according to grade for easy identification and retrieval of lesson plans for a particular grade or grade range.
The website to access all of the state standards can be found at: