Monarchs and more - A kaleidoscope of connections in the classroom

The North American Monarch Institute, a teacher professional development program with a 15 year history, aims to provide teachers with the knowledge, confidence and skills to use monarchs and other invertebrates as teaching tools. These workshops use the Monarchs and More curriculum to guide participants through hands-on- activities based in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in monarch life cycle, migration, and ecology. Lessons include science investigations and explorations of monarch habitat, learning about connections to and within the ecosystems shared by monarchs and countless other organisms. In their implementation, teachers are encouraged to use the schoolyard as their classroom and engage their students in conservation for monarchs.