Educational Opportunities

Connecticut RiverFest offers program support through interdisciplinary, K-12 curriculum including hands-on river, environmental and community, restoration, and protection activities.

RiverDays offer schools a day-long event with educational and artistic explorations at the water's edge, hands-on restoration/protection efforts, a river honoring, and stewardship education for participating riparian landowners.

River Residencies in schools foster stewardship through educational explorations and artistic expression. Knowledge gained about watersheds and rivers is reinforced through creativity in theater, music, art and storytelling, encouraging connection and leading to increased awareness of important river issues.

Additional programs available

• Sharing river projects at the Big Splash river festival.
• Offering high school students and teachers involvement in the Vermont Envirothon, part of a national program to increase hands-on nature/science/ community learning.
• Making available to educators collections of resource materials including activities teaching river ecology and watershed concepts, with interdisciplinary K-12 curricula that include age-appropriate activities.
• Offering background information and curricula about the Connecticut River watershed ecosystems. The area includes the Connecticut River and its tributaries, riparian zones, wetlands, and surrounding lands in the drainage basin.
• Working with teachers to weave interdisciplinary river curriculum into classroom plans, addressing educational standards through river studies, offering watershed teacher training workshops for different grade levels.
• Facilitating River Studies in classrooms, including watershed background, hands-on activities engaging students with river environments through project-based learning.
• Networking with teachers, program leaders, and environmental educators who implement river study programs in the Connecticut Valley and beyond. Students communicate with other classes, and teachers with other schools, using internet access through Connecticut River Education Initiative (CREI).
• Encouraging community participation in sharing knowledge and helping with field trips.
• Initiating a student-created newsletter to share ideas, with distribution available to parents and interested community members.
• Inviting parents and community to artistic presentations by students.
• Creating a district-wide Student Congress at which classes can present their projects and share findings with each other and with the community. This could be a final assessment for students and for the project. Presentations may include an art show, musical, dance and theatrical performances as well as mathematical and scientific analyses, poetry and prose readings, and historical documentation.