Recycling Campaign

Ms. Gee is a secondary science teacher who is collaborating with a math teacher on a lesson on the impact of humans on their environment. They plan an inquiry based lesson that will addressing the following science standards: including formulating questions based on observations, and proposing and comparing viable methods of responding to an identified need or problem. They will also address math standards.

The essential question for this unit is, "How does human consumption of resources impact the environment?"

Ms. Gee kicks off the unit with a whole class discussion of what students throw away every day and what happens to it afterwards. The students quickly identify the things that they throw away frequently - paper, food, plastic water bottles, and soft drink cans. They also know that the trash is picked up and hauled to the landfill. At this point, they are not clear about what happens next. Some suggest that the trash decomposes, but others think that the landfill gets full and a new one is established. Ms. Gee devises two methods for students to address these hypotheses.

She first proposes that students do a hands-on experiment with pieces of banana peel placed in plastic bags. Some bags are left in the light; others are kept in the dark. Water is added to some but not others. Some are closed tightly and others are left open. A pair of students is assigned to each bag and they observe the banana peels every day and take pictures of them with their smartphones or tablets. Using their laptops, the students create a report on their findings in their science wiki that is illustrated by the series of pictures taken with the smartphones or tablets. As a class, they compare the reports of the various bags. The students come to the conclusion that the banana peels do decompose and that water, air, and light have an effect on the process.

Ms. Gee also asks the students to choose several of the items that they commonly throw away and search the Internet to find information on how fast these items decompose. She asks them to find several sources for their information and to use their laptops to document each source explaining why they believe that it is a credible source. The students create a graph using Excel and include it in the wiki showing rates of decomposition for each item. They quickly come to the conclusion that both of their hypotheses are correct, trash does decompose, but many items decompose so slowly that landfills do fill up. They decide that this is a problem that they would like to address by conducting a campaign to make their families and schoolmates aware of this problem and to encourage them to recycle.

In math class, the students plan to collect data to show the difference in how much people throw away before and after their campaign. They create a mobile survey, using an online tool called QuestionPro, which asks questions about what people throw away, how much they throw away, and if they recycle. They also ask demographic questions, so that they will be able to identify the ages of the people responding and their job or station in life (parent, teacher, secretary, student, sibling, etc.) They then send an email with a link to the survey asking everyone in their school and in their homes to respond. The mobile survey can be easily accessed and viewed on a smartphone, which makes it easier to reach a larger number of people.

After gathering the survey results, the students begin a campaign to make everyone aware of how much trash is thrown away at school and at home. Their campaign has many facets and the class divides into work groups: some use their laptops to create a blog to document the process of the project; others create a website. Another group sends tweets with their smartphones to remind everyone to recycle. At the end of the campaign, they email the mobile survey to the individuals who responded to the first survey and ask them to take the survey again. They compare the data from before and after the campaign to see if they have had an impact. They also analyze the data by group to see who was more likely to change - adults or youth, those at home or at school, teachers or students, etc. They use the school website as well as email to announce their findings to everyone.

Daily, the students use a rubric to grade themselves and each of their teammates on the quality of their work and the amount of their contribution to the group product. Ms.Gee uses these checklists as well as the group products to assess the students' learning and teamwork.

Ms. Gee knows that extended use of laptops, tablets, and smartphones can distract from learning if used inappropriately. Therefore, before beginning this lesson, she and the math teacher explicitly communicate expectations for using these devices. They ensure the students understand limits for "surfing the Web" and using specific software (such as media players or instant messaging), as well as the goals for the day (what needs to be completed or what progress needs to be demonstrated).

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