Student Activity 1
Objective: Students will determine the types of plastics found in fourth grade trash.
Essential Question: What are we throwing away and how does it affect our environment?
Procedure:
- Collect trash from fourth grade classrooms for a day.
- Divide students into groups of 2 or 3 students and have them wear rubber gloves (for sorting the trash). They should determine sorting categories (type of material, unknown, recyclable). The idea is for them to notice that there is a lot of plastic.
- Graph results. Students decide what type of graph they would like to create (bar, picture, line). They can count, measure, or weigh the trash.
- Have the students determine analogies for the size/amount of trash that the fourth grade generated in one day. Analogies for a week or for the whole school could also be generated.
- How will this impact the landfills in a year?
- What are these plastic food wrappers made of?
Closure:
Students should come to the conclusion that we are adding an immense amount of plastic to our landfills. What happens to the plastic that we throw away?
Comments: