5 Tips for Using Yellowstone National Park with your Students

Are you studying the western region of the United States? Looking to engage your students with the national parks? Look no further than Yellowstone National Park! I’ve compiled my top 5 tips for teaching with Yellowstone National Park!

1.) Become a Remote Junior Ranger

Most of you reading this don’t live within field trip range to Yellowstone National Park. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t have your students become Junior Rangers. Not all the parks, such as Yellowstone, have their Jr. Ranger packets online, but by contacting the park via email or Facebook, you can find out more information about becoming a ranger. To go along with becoming a Jr. Ranger, I also like to pair my students’ learning with a video from Rock the Park or the Arts and Culture project that Google and the NPS paired up for.

2.) Read about the Park

Having books about the park available for your students is a great way to have them learn about the park. Below is a list of a few of my favorite books, and you can click here to check out my Yellowstone National Park book list on Epic.

3.) Skype with the Park

Since we all can’t visit the park, bring the park to your classroom! It is super easy to set up a Skype or Zoom (or Google Meet) call with a ranger from Yellowstone National Park. Over the years I have done a bunch of calls with rangers and they have all been fantastic. To learn more about the programs that Yellowstone offers, check them out here.

4.) The First National Park

Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the world! The land in the park was first set aside in 1872, and it has been enjoyed by millions since then. To learn more about the history of the national parks, grab my freebie here! This is perfect for your reading or social studies classroom- students will learn about the park, while focusing on text features.

5.) Make it Simple

Looking to easily add the national parks into your lessons? Grab my Yellowstone National Park Reading Comprehension activities. In this week-long reading unit students will learn about the park using both fiction and non-fiction, new vocabulary words, text connections, park brochure and pennant, and MORE! AND I have both a printable and digital version. Grab these here!