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Humans and Trash
First graders identify items for trash or recycling. In this humans and trash lesson, 1st graders are given a piece of trash and must determine how an animal's habitat would be affected if the item was included. Students discuss how to...
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Sorting "Good" Junk (Recycling)
Second graders study recycling. In this environment activity, 2nd graders discuss how to sort trash, sort actual trash labeling it, and explore the trash writing new uses of each item of trash instead of throwing the item away.
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No Impact Project: Food
Students explore their food choices and the impact of them to the environment as well as their quality of life. In this food choices activity, students use the film and book from the project No Impact Man to explore the impact of food...
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Graphing Trash Material
Students investigate recycling. In this reuse and recycle instructional activity, students examine the number and kinds of materials they discard. It also encourages them to think about taking action by reusing and recycling some of...
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Tons of Trash
In this trash lesson plan, students record how much trash their family throws away. Students then calculate how much trash they would make in 1 week and in 1 year.
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Recycling and Waste Reduction
Students investigate recycling and waste reduction and its positive impact on the environment. In this environmental science instructional activity, students determine how and why materials are recycled. They apply their knowledge by...
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Junk Mail Overload!
Students discuss the "junk mail nuisance" with the teacher and share their opinions on the problem. Students collect a week's worth of junk mail, bring to class and complete a chart about the amount and weight. Students then complete an...
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Treacherous Trash
Students recognize the harmful effects people have on the environment. In this environmental lesson, students simulate water pollution clean-up by using tangled objects and untangling them in a cooperative group. Students identify why...
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Classroom Trash Audit
Students investigate solid waste. In this environmental lesson, students collect their own garbage for a day and analyze the weight and the percentage of recyclable items in their trash.
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Lesson: Litter Hunt
Students examine the issue of littering. In this waste management lesson, students discover what littering is and how it affects the environment.
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What is Trash?
Students consider what garbage is and where it ends up. In this recycling lesson, students read excerpts from Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little as they consider methods to reduce wastefulness.
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There Is No Away
Students identify how trash is disposed of. In this environmental lesson, students read and discuss the poem "Sarah Sylvia Stout" by Shel Silverstein and discuss the ways people treated the items in the poem. Students discuss how trash...
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Feed Me!
In this following directions activity students are given a activity with 25 pieces of trash. They then have to follow the directions of underlining, coloring, circling, and drawing the items that are described.
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Where Does Our Rubbish Go?
In this environmental issues learning exercise, 5th graders read a two page text with photographs and statistics about the 3 methods of getting rid of trash: recycling, burning, burying. There are no questions to answer but there are...
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How Long Does Trash Last
Students work in cooperative groups to estimate how long trash lasts in a landfill. They study environmental consequences of not recycling and use graph-making software to create a graph that illustrates the lifespan of trash items...
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What Can We Do About Trash in Our Community?
Fourth graders examine how to deal with the amount of trash in their community. They discover alternate ways of managing waste. They develop their own solutions to the problem.
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Trash City
Students work together to build a trash city. They collect items that would go into a landfill to help them build their city. They discuss ways to cut down on garbage.
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Where Should It Go? Recycle? Compost? Incinerate? Landfill?
Students discuss what happens to trash after it is collected. They sort "clean" trash into groups depending on whether it should be recycled, incinerated, placed in a landfill, composted or if it is something we could avoid using.
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I Can Be An Archaeologist Book Share
Students read and discuss the book, I Can Be An Archaeologist by Robert B. Pickering, and become archaeologists, themselves, as they examine, sort, and record items in a paper bag and trash from their classroom, as well as 2 others.
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Trash To Treasure
In this environmental worksheet, students learn about reusing trash and making crafts and useful items instead of throwing it into a landfill. Students study 15 pictures of crafts and list as many trash items as they can find.
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The Trash We Pass
Students engage in a study of trash and how it is disposed of in the environment. They also research the impact of recycling and its effects upon the disposal amounts. Students calculate the advantages of recycling using real world...
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Trash on Texas Beaches
Young scholars take a field trip to a local Texas beach. Using the trash and debris they find, they classify them based on specific criteria. In groups, they calculate the total for each category and determine the percentage of each...
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What's Up with Waste?
Fifth graders design a brochure that identifies types of solid waste that are often improperly disposed, explains the effects of this disposal and proposes a solution to the problem. The read humorous books, define vocabulary words and...
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Mini-Sanitary Landfill
Second graders work in groups to bury a variety of trash items and arrange them in a mini-landfill. They predict which items will biodegrade and then keep records of what the items look like every ten days. Students consider how...