Teachers can play a vital role in teaching youth about hellbenders, water quality, and watershed protection. This website provides a rich content of lesson plans, classroom posters, activities and stickers.
Teacher Resources
There are many ways to integrate watershed management, water quality enhancement, and helping hellbenders into your classroom activities. The following lesson plans are directly aligned with many state standards and ready to use in the classroom.
Hellbender Lesson Plans:- Adaptations for Aquatic Amphibians
- Hellbenders Rock!
- Adult Hellbender video
- Juvenile Hellbender video
Watershed Lesson Plans:
- Discovering the Watershed
- What is a Watershed
- Protect your streams, protect your mountains
- Water Education Posters
- Streamside Science
- Aquatic Macroinvertebrates (pdf 573 KB)
- Water Cycle (pdf 2,760 KB)
Water Quality Lesson Plans:
- Healthy Water, Happy Home
- Water Pollution (pdf 2,760 KB)
- Ground and Surface Water Activities (pdf 3,714 KB)
Don't miss the videos in our Help the Hellbender YouTube playlist and our "A Moment in the Wild" series. You will find videos for kids, teachers, natural resource leaders or enthusiasts that share all about hellbenders, smaller salamanders, rock stacking, snakes, frogs, wetlands and much more.
- Help the Hellbender, Purdue Extension-Forestry and Natural Resources (FNR) YouTube Playlist
- A Moment in the Wild, Purdue Extension-FNR YouTube Playlist
- Ask an Expert, Purdue, Purdue Extension-FNR YouTube Playlist
- Pisgah brewing 2016 hellbender will benefit wild south
The Full Pint - Help the hellbenders: Don't move the rocks
Citizen-Times - Nonprofit aims to help embattled amphibian recover
The Daily Star - Local salamander conservation focus of AU lecture
Richland Source - Historic hellbender hatches
Nashville Zoo - Scientists find a 200 year old salamander just chilling
MSN News - The hellbender: an original member of the Ozarks community
KSMU Ozarks Public Radio - Cupid's syringe: a love potion for troubled amphibians
Mongabay Wildtech - Hot on the Alabama trail of the elusive hellbender
The Wildlife Society - Toledo zoo and Penta partner to help threatened hellbender salamanders
NBC 24 - Outdoors: Stories of Pennsylvania's largest salamander
The Sentinel - Chattanooga zoo announces baby hellbenders
The Chattanoogan - Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo to help rear rare hellbenders
KPC News - Saint Louis Zoo shares secrets of salamander love at hellbender symposium
St. Louis Public Radio - News about hellbenders reaches the northeastern US
Maine Dept. of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife - Purdue-Zoo Partnership Aims to Save the Hellbender
WLFI - Purdue part of national group bent on saving the hellbender
Purdue News
The Help the Hellbender team have several resources to help you identify and learn why our hellbenders are declining.
If you would like the Help the Hellbender Team to come to your area and give a presentation contact Dr. Rod Williams, rodw@purdue.edu.
Activities
Clean Water Crossword (pdf)
Hellbender Crossword (pdf)
Watershed Crossword (pdf)
Clean Water Word Search (pdf)
Hellbender Name Word Search (pdf)
Watershed Word Search (pdf)
Coloring Pages
Click on the coloring page for a free pdf download, print and color.
Coloring Book
Click on this 6 page coloring book with maze game, free pdf download, print, staple, trim and color.
Help Herbie thrive by navigating the river, eating crawfish, and avoiding natural and man-made hazards. Learn about the lifecycle and preservation of the Hellbender Salamander, North America’s largest salamander.
Nature of Teaching now has photos and sounds: Amphibians: Frogs, Toads and Salamanders.