Wildfire Education Resources for Informal Educators

These materials have been developed to support educators in bringing wildfire education to youth in a trauma-informed, engaging, and educational environment. We understand that wildfire can be a sensitive subject, and our goal is to equip educators with the right tools to approach this topic thoughtfully. Whether you’re looking for hands-on activities, best practices, or planning guides, you’ll find a range of resources here to enhance your lessons.

 

Below you’ll find resources to help you learn about wildfire and the science behind it, the Trauma-Informed Toolkit by Oregon State University, and example lesson plans that Living With Fire has created and/or adapted.

Fire Activities Guide:

Matchstick Model Forest

In this activity, students will learn about fire behavior depending on the density of a forest. We create a model of a forest by placing matches (representing trees) in pegboards. Depending on how densely the matches are placed, the fire will get larger or smaller. In the last round of burning, there is a competition between students in which, at the center of the pegboard there is a match that represents a house. The students’ goal is to have the most matches on their board without burning down the house.

 

Defensible Space Inspectors

This activity is meant to teach about defensible space in an interactive way. Students will act as defensible space inspectors by going through the site available to them with a defensible space checklist in a scavenger hunt-esque manner.

 

Fuel Finders

In this lesson, students learn the difference between dry fuels and wet fuels and how they burn. They will go on a hunt for two samples of each and write or draw a journal entry about what they found. Students will then sort the fuels into bins labeled “dry” and “wet”, and instructors will go through the piles to show what was correctly sorted. As an optional addition to this activity, instructors will burn the fuels that students found to further illustrate the difference in fire behavior in wet and dry environments.

 

Who Lives Here? (FireWorks Adaptation)

In this activity, students will work in groups to learn about an assigned (or chosen) animal and how it adapts to fire. They will then craft items such as masks to represent their animals in a scene they will create and act out for the rest of the class. This scene is a creative way to teach other students about their animal’s adaptations and behavior in wildfire situations. After their presentations are finished, the whole group will participate in a game that reinforces wildfire adaptation information they learned throughout the lesson.

 

Nature Journaling (Pyrosketchology)

This activity teaches students to be more present in nature. In the context of fire, students can journal about fire weather indicators such as cloud cover, wind, precipitation and temperature in a day; if you are located in an environment where fire happened recently, they can track ecosystem change over time; personal reflections on fire safety; sensory activities related to fuels and fire. Nature journaling can also be an accompaniment to any aforementioned wildfire activity.

Wildfire Education Resources

Learning about wildfire as an educator

Living With Fire Wildfire Science Curriculum

Pyrosketchology by Miriam H. Morrill

FireWorks Curricula Overview

Wildfire Home Retrofit Guide

Be Ember Aware! Will your home survive when the embers arrive?

Choosing the Right Plants for Northern Nevada's High Fire Hazard Areas

Wildfire Evacuation Checklist

Trauma-Informed Teaching Materials

Trauma-Informed Toolkit Full Text

Lesson Planning Tools

Sample Lesson Plans

Adopt an AnimaL(FireWorks)

Fire Investigation Hide and Seek

Defensible Space Inspectors

Fuel Finders

Matchstick Model Forest

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