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Invasive Species: Education Resources

WXXI Education has pulled together educational support resources related to learning about invasive species.

In support of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) new documentary called “Uninvited: The Spread of Invasive Species”, WXXI Education staff have collected resources from our partners and PBS LearningMedia that are appropriate for use with middle and high school students.

These materials touch on: invasive species, climate change, biodiversity, human activity, stewardship, restoration, community science, and more. 

NYSDEC Resources
The following materials are resources shared by New York State Department of Environmental Convservation:

  • Invasive Species Education & Outreach Initiatives
  • K-12 Invasive Species Educator Resources: It is crucial that students have a basic understanding of invasive species and what they can do to help stop the spread. By instilling this knowledge at an early age, we can help mold them into becoming good stewards of the environment. Incorporate invasive species into your classroom by utilizing these resources.
  • About Uninvited: The documentary introduces the concept of invasive species and highlights some of the species threatening New York’s environment and economy, while also showing some innovative ways that New York State is combatting these threats. Uninvited features the collaborative work of DEC and its partners including NYS Department of Agriculture & Markets, the eight Partnerships for Regional Invasive Species Management (PRISMs), New York State Invasive Species Research Institute (NYISRI), and more. More details can be found here: https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/114620.html

     Watch the full documentary here:

Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management (PRISM) Resources
The following materials are provided by New York State’s PRISMs and Finger Lakes PRISM:

PBS LearningMedia Resources

To support instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

Topic: Invasive Species

Topic: Climate Change

Topic: Stewardship / Human Impact /Conservation

Topic: Biodiversity / Ecosystems

Elinor Wonders Why: Songs, Videos & Activities

Play games and watch full episodes of Elinor Wonders Why on pbskids.org/elinor

PBS KIDS for Parents Elinor Wonders Why Show Page: Articles, Games, and Activities

PBS LearningMedia Elinor Wonders Why Collections: Elinor Wonders Why Collection & Elinor Wonders Why Ready to Learn

Where to Watch:

Elinor Wonders Why Videos Playlist

About the Show:  Elinor Wonders Why is a PBS KIDS animated show encourages children to follow their curiosity, ask questions, figure out the answers, and learn about the natural world around them using their science inquiry skills. The multiplatform series, created by celebrated cartoonist and robotics engineer, Jorge Cham, and physicist and educator, Daniel Whiteson, produced in partnership with Pipeline Studios.

Developed for children ages 3-5, Elinor Wonders Why centers on the adventures of Elinor and her pals, Ari, a funny and imaginative bat; and Olive, a perceptive and warm elephant. As young viewers explore Animal Town along with Elinor, Ari and Olive, they will meet all kinds of interesting, funny, and quirky characters, each with a lesson to share about respecting others, the importance of diversity, caring for the environment and working together to solve problems. Elinor models the foundational practices of science inquiry and engineering design in each episode, using her amazing powers of observation and willingness to ask questions. When she encounters something she doesn’t understand, like why birds have feathers or how tiny ants build massive anthills, she perseveres until she figures it out. In discovering the answers, Elinor often learns something about nature’s ingenious inventions and how they can relate to aspects of our designed world, as well as what it takes to live in a community.

WXXI Favorite Activities:

See Games, Activities and Videos from the Elinor Wonders Why Series at PBS KIDS

Find articles, games, and hands-on activities to go with the series at the PBS KIDS for Parents Elinor Wonders Why Page

I Can Be What?! PBS LearningMedia Collection

Series Description:


I Can Be What?! is a PBS LearningMedia Collection that gives kids a sneak peek into the world of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) careers. Hosted by science communicator and electrical engineer, Jennifer Indovina, each episode explores a unique job, highlighting what makes it fun, as well as the responsibilities, skills, and education needed to get into the related career field. The main goal of I Can Be What?! is to provide an entryway into career exploration for elementary-aged students, showcasing academic, technical, trade, and artistic career options. The series is also available on YouTube. Learn more about the production.

More Career Exploration Resources


I Can Be What?! Series on PBS LearningMedia

Host Bio:

Jen Indovina: Host of I Can Be What?!

The host of I Can Be What?! is Jen Indovina. Jen is a clean-tech entrepreneur, inventor, Rochester Institute of Technology adjunct professor, and TED Fellow, who is currently working to spread energy efficiency initiatives worldwide. Jen is the CEO and co-founder of Tenrehte Technologies, Inc., a company that uses clean energy to produce wireless consumer electronics products. Jen is co-chair of the Science Ambassador Scholarship, a full-tuition scholarship for a woman in science, technology, engineering, or math. In every episode, Jen jumps headfirst into a typical day with each professional, learning not only what makes their job fun and rewarding, but the skills and education needed to get there.

Back to School Resources

Explore different topics and tools for back-to-school and also useful year-round.

Back to School with PBS KIDS

WXXI Back to School: It’s Time for Kindergarten!/ De Vuelta a la Escuela: Es hora de kinder!

Download Kindergarten Booklet

Back to School

There are also some great resources that PBS KIDS and PBS LearningMedia have pulled together to support your family during this new season of learning:

Explore the full PBS KIDS for Parents Back-to-School Hub: Find more articles, games, activities, and snacks for busy back-to-school time. 


WXXI’s Back-to-School Digital Backpack is a digital toolbox full of resources to help families, educators, and students in any learning setting. Our digital backpack includes the following:

Science Education Resources

WXXI Education has curated a list of useful Science learning resources (lesson plans, content collections, partner sites, interactives, and printables) for students and educators in grades 6-12.

To support instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

PBS LearningMedia: Science Subject Area – Explore natural phenomena and scientific practices with videos, lesson plans, and interactive tools.

All of the above topic areas are available as PBS LearningMedia Science One-Sheets to share with students and educators. One-sheets include a clickable link and QR code for easy access. 

Favorite Science Collections
There are tons of Science tools available through PBS LearningMedia, here are WXXI Education’s top 5 Science collections:

1. NOVA: Gross Science: Why do we smell different when we’re sick? Why does cheese smell like feet? Why don’t vultures get sick from eating rotting meat? Science is filled with stories: some of them are beautiful and some of them are gross. Really gross. Gross Science, a YouTube series hosted by Anna Rothschild, tells bizarre stories from the slimy, smelly, creepy world of science. In this collection, you’ll find original short-form videos and DIY experiments from Gross Science, which is produced by NOVA and PBS Digital Studios. Learn about amphibians that eat their mother’s skin, strange uses for bacon, how poop can be used to cure an infection, and more gross science topics.

2. California Academy of Sciences: The California Academy of Sciences is a renowned scientific and educational institution dedicated to exploring, explaining, and sustaining life on Earth. Based in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the Academy produces free online courses, award-winning Planetarium shows, short science videos, K-12 training toolkits, and compilations of teaching strategies for the science classroom.

3. NOVA: The NOVA collection on PBS LearningMedia contains over 1500 resources from NOVA’s broadcast and digital productions that educators can use in their lessons to spark and enrich student knowledge of STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics). NOVA’s resources are primarily designed for use in middle and high school STEM classrooms.

4. NASA Planety Sciences: In these videos and interactives from NASA, catalogued and adapted by WGBH, explore the exciting discoveries from NASA missions about the planets, moons, and other objects in our solar system. You’ll also find interactive lessons for middle and high school students and for teacher professional development!, as well as three professional development videos from WNET showing planetary science in action in a high school classroom.

5. Nature: This collection of science videos and media-enhanced lesson plans draws upon the powerful documentaries of public television’s award-winning natural history series, Nature. The video segments have been carefully selected to engage students with key curriculum concepts. The lesson plans incorporate hands-on activities, online resources, and video to interactively and creatively address topics and standards in Life Science/Living Environment and Earth Science.

Additional Science Resources from Partner Organizations

Annenberg Learner Series – Educator Science Resources

Social Studies Education Resources:

WXXI Education has curated a list of useful social studies learning resources (lesson plans, content collections, partner sites, interactives, and printables) for students and educators in grades 6-12.

To support instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

PBS LearningMedia: Social Studies Subject Area – Explore natural phenomena and scientific practices with videos, lesson plans, and interactive tools.

All of the above topic areas are available as PBS LearningMedia Social Studies One-Sheets to share with students and educators. One-sheets include a clickable link and QR code for easy access. 

Favorite Social Studies Collections
There are tons of Social Studies resources available through PBS LearningMedia, here are WXXI Education’s top 5 Social Studies collections:

1. Teaching with Primary Source Inquiry Kits: As the perfect springboard for middle and high school student research projects, TPS Inquiry Kits have five primary sources, mostly from the Library of Congress, and one secondary source. Many of the primary sources are images, maps, audio, or video to support accessibility by students of any reading level. Each kit features three thinking questions to guide students, and web-based tools to help them analyze the historical sources. Explore each inquiry kit, and find the thinking questions under Support Materials.

2. PBS NewsHour | Daily News Story: PBS Newshour Classroom helps teachers and students identify the who, what, when, where, and why-it-matters of major national and international news stories. In partnership with PBS LearningMedia, we are proud to bring you the Daily News Story which takes the best of the PBS NewsHour news program and pairs it with discussion questions, lesson plans, and stories developed specifically for students. The lesson plans and resources help achieve Common Core State Standards goals and cover core academic subject areas ranging from civics and government to world affairs and education.

3. American Masters: American Masters, public television’s award-winning biography series, brings unique originality and perspective to exploring the lives and illuminating the creative journeys of our most enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists and filmmakers – those who have left an indelible impression on our nation’s cultural landscape.

4. The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross: Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. recounts the full trajectory of African-American history in his groundbreaking series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. The series explores the evolution of the African-American people, as well as the multiplicity of cultural institutions, political strategies, and religious and social perspectives they developed — forging their own history, culture and society against unimaginable odds. Using video clips from The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, this collection of lesson plans addresses a wide range of themes of the African-American experience from 1500 to the present.

5. Teaching the Vietnam War: This collection of videos and lesson plans can help students explore the social and political dynamics of the Vietnam War. Students will examine why, how, and by whom the Vietnam War was fought, how it affected U.S. citizens at home, and how factors shifted over the course of the war. Students will identify the Vietnam War’s legacy and lasting toll on veterans. This collection includes resources related to The Vietnam War, a ten-part documentary series that aired on PBS September 17-21, 2017. The series represents the latest work from filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and featured archival footage and testimony from nearly 100 witnesses, including American veterans who fought in the war and Americans who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians. 

Annenberg Learner Series – Educator Social Studies Resources

Math Education Resources:

WXXI Education has curated a list of useful Math learning resources (lesson plans, content collections, partner sites, interactives, and printables) for students and educators in grades 6-12.

To support instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

PBS LearningMedia: Math Subject Area – Bring math concepts to life through interactive games, animations and engaging media resources.

Favorite Math Collections
There are tons of Math resources available through PBS LearningMedia, here are WXXI Education’s top Math collections:

1. Math + Arts: This collection of lesson plans uses dance, drama, music, and visual arts to teach math concepts.

2. Math at the Core: Middle School: Find engaging media and integrated activities, all aligned with the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. Designed for middle school students of diverse learning styles and backgrounds. Explore the collection by Common Core Domain (Operations & Algebraic Thinking, Numbers & Operations, The Number System, Ratios & Proportions, Equations & Expressions, Functions, Measurement & Data, Geometry, Statistics & Probability), or by grade level (5-8th grades).

3. Cyberchase: Cyberchase is the Emmy award-winning animated math mystery show featuring a team of curious kids who use their math and problem solving skills to outwit and outsmart the villain Hacker in their quest to save Cyberspace. In addition to segments from the animated portion of the show, this collection of resources includes live-action For Real segments, in which hosts Bianca and Harry explore the show’s math topics in everyday life. Topics include: Algebra, Data Analysis and Measurement, Geometry, Numbers and Operations, Math and Health, Math and the Environment, and Cyberchase At-Home Activities.

4. Think Math: These entertaining, imaginative resources from KET include standards-based interactives and videos for grades 5-8. Think Math offers 43 KET-produced resources from Math at the Core: Middle School, including 17 Scale Cityvideos and interactives about proportional reasoning, 14 Wild Fractions animations and games that feature visual models for fraction multiplication and division, nine Logical Leaps interactives about number lines, and three Maritime Mysteries interactives involving Cartesian graphs. Designed to appeal to diverse learners, these KET resources provide real-world connections, opportunities to think more deeply about mathematics, and ways to use both logic and computation to solve problems.

Additional Math Resources from Partner Organizations

Annenberg Learner Series – Educator Math Resource

English Language Arts Education Resources:

WXXI Education has curated a list of useful English-Language Arts learning resources (lesson plans, content collections, partner sites, interactives, and printables) for students and educators in grades 6-12. 

To support instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

PBS LearningMedia: English-Language Arts Subject Area – Browse standards-aligned ELA resources for students in all grades.

Favorite ELA Collections

There are tons of ELA resources available through PBS LearningMedia, here are WXXI Education’s top ELA collections:

1. Shakespeare Uncovered combines history, biography, iconic performances, new analysis, and the personal passions of its celebrated hosts to tell the stories behind the stories of Shakespeare’s greatest plays – Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, the comedies Twelfth Night and As You Like It, Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, Hamlet and The Tempest.

2. American Masters,public television’s award-winning biography series, brings unique originality and perspective to exploring the lives and illuminating the creative journeys of our most enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists and filmmakers – those who have left an indelible impression on our nation’s cultural landscape. 

3. Literary Elements: Use these animated shorts to introduce or review literary elements and techniques like theme, setting, figurative language, characterization, and conflict. Can be used when students are just learning how to identify the most commonly used elements in poetry and literature or when a student needs a quick refresher. 

4. POV (a cinema term for “point of view”) is television’s longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films. POV premieres 14-16 of the best, boldest and most innovative programs every year on PBS. Since 1988, POV has presented over 400 films to public television audiences across the country. POV films are known for their intimacy, their unforgettable storytelling and their timeliness, putting a human face on contemporary social issues. POV’s lesson plans offer rigorous entry-points to the study of critical social issues.

5. A World of Stories: Storytelling has been used as entertainment, cultural preservation, and a way to teach values. Stories are typically told orally and passed down from generation to generation. This collection contains stories from around the world.

Additional ELA Resources from Partner Organizations

Annenberg Learner Series – Educator ELA Resources

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