FireWorks Curriculum Featuring Northern California Oak Woodlands

This version of FireWorks focuses on the oak woodlands in northern California, where wildlands meet rural and urban areas. Many people live here and experience wildland fire every summer. To learn about some of the plants, animals, and fungi that live in these communities, see the essays in the FireWorks Encyclopedia.

Like all FireWorks programs, the northern California oak woodlands program provides students with interactive, hands-on activities to study wildland fire. It consists of a curriculum and trunks of materials for educators. The curriculum is targeted to middle school levels, but could be adapted for elementary school, high school, or even adults!

This program was created by University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources employees. It is revised from select lessons in the Sierra Nevada curriculum with a focus on applying Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and trauma informed education and adapted to northern California oak woodlands natural and cultural ecology. There are three 5E learning cycles including (1) Natural and Cultural Ecology, (2) Fire Behavior, and (3) Wildfire Preparations. This is our suggested order for the cycles, but you can do them in any order or only do parts of them. Two of the three cycles (Fire Behavior and Wildfire Preparations), are applicable anywhere that wildland fires burn. The Natural and Cultural Ecology cycle is relevant for the northern California oak woodlands. For additional activities, see curricula from other regions.

If you would like to know more about the curriculum, you can view the online training, which includes a curricula overview and specifics about each 5E learning cycle and lesson.