Responsible Science Lesson

Students instantly started working together to sort trash items.
They worked collaboratively and talked each other through
their reasoning. After they were done I asked them to explain
to me why they had classified the items into the different categories.

What

The curricular content of the lesson ties into the general overarching unit the students are working at the moment, I am Responsible. The lesson is focused on how students can be responsible in their lives to help the planet be a better and greener place. Goals for the students include learning about different ways that we can “be green” that are simple and easy first steps to a better world. The students will also focus on trash and recycling, because discarding is an action that even a first grade student can control.  Students will learn about the different types of garbage being thrown away, ending up in the landfill and how that impacts our world. Students will have a better understanding of what can be recycled and how it should be classified and sorted. Most of the state standards are not necessarily focused on environmental issues and sustainability so we chose to focus on classification and sorting since it is a big part of the activity. We will also address the standards on biotechnologies and the idea of waste management through a discussion on the difference between trashing and recycling items. 

                                                                                    

During our "trash talk" I showed the students the Reduce,
Reuse, Recycle symbol and asked them to explain what they
thought each term meant. We talked about what could happen
to the environment if we didn't recycle. Students proposed
different ways to reuse household items and conserve the amount
of paper they use in their school journals.

How

I will start by asking students to sort the trash items into different categories that they see fit. This will allow the students to explore with the different materials and give us a chance to gauge their understanding. I will have the students explain their methods for sorting and then have a “trash talk” about what ends up in landfills and what could be done in terms of recycling. We will have discussions about the repercussions of having all of these things end up in a landfill instead of being recycled and reused. The culminating activity will be reading aloud 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World. During and after reading the story students will be prompted with questions about their own actions. After each action explained in the book students will be prompted to see if they already do this and why they do/how this helps our world. This will lead to thinking about ways to be green beyond sorting trash properly and how this is “being responsible.”

Why

Students were actively engaged. Here I show them the recycling
symbol on a can they had just sorted. They continued to try and
find it on the other objects. At the end of the lesson each student
is named "Recycling Star" in charge of keeping the classroom clean.

I selected the topic because it fit into the overarching theme for the coming weeks in the classroom of I am Responsible! The idea was formed around using the text 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World. The text was creative and fit along perfectly with the other material being used in the classroom for this unit. It was small, easy steps for even the youngest children to understand and adapt into their daily lives. We believe that most of the learning happens when students are prompted to answer and ask questions amongst themselves and decided to use this to model most of the lesson. There is a recycling bin in the classroom, but students don’t know how to use it properly and this lesson will be a great introduction to proper recycling. There is one particular student that will be pulled into this small group lesson because he constantly expresses an interest in garbage trucks and recycling so this lesson will play into this interests well. The lesson was designed to fill a gap in the current state standards to the School District of Philadelphia. No science standards are expected of first graders and we believe that this lesson is a simple and easy way to introduce students to science that fits into the broader district unit and also teaches kids how to be active and responsible community advocates for sustainability that students in these low performing schools do not normally have access to.

To wrap up the lesson on helping the environment we read Melanie Walsh’s book and discussed how each task was “being responsible.”