National Park Service
Reduce Our Carbon Footprint, Let’s Compost!
Roll up your sleeves and get a little dirty with this elementary and middle school compost lesson plan. All you need is a large plastic container, a couple old newspapers, some organic waste, and a few hundred worms and you're ready...
Tennessee Valley Authority
Renewable Energy Sources
Not all energy sources are renewable, as learners investigate in this unit. Made up of six lessons that span a few weeks of instruction, the unit has learners examining US energy reserves and consumption, using data to draw conclusions...
NASA
The Cycle of Matter
An educational lesson focuses on the idea of conservation of matter through a demonstration of the water cycle, a discussion of digesting food, and the path of carbon and oxygen atoms as they change form.
Curated OER
Let's Talk Trash
For this solid waste worksheet, learners classify the different types of solid wastes found in landfills into given categories. Students predict and tally the total number of each type of item found in the landfill using slips of paper....
Curated OER
Organic and Inorganic Recycling
Students examine their role in polluting the environment and discuss the importance of recycling. In groups, they place earthworms into compost piles to observe why they are considered natural recyclers. They also practice sorting a...
Curated OER
Trash Bashing
Students define trash, garbage, or solid waste, discuss ways of disposing of trash, list examples of biodegradable materials, and have trash relay race in order to sort trash into appropriate containers labeled biodegradable, reusable,...
Curated OER
EPA's Superfund Program
Students work together to gather information about the EPA's Superfund program. They discuss how to improve human health and the environment. They discover how hazardous wastes are characterized and cleaned up.
Curated OER
Make Your Own Recycled Paper
Paper Lesson Plan - Students discover how paper is made. Working together, they make their own paper. This activity introduces students to recycling; what it is and its importance. Students study the process of how paper is made, and...
Curated OER
Electronics: Wants or Needs?
Third graders determine how electronics negatively impact the environment. In this environmental activity, 3rd graders read the article "Earth Friendly Waste Management", and identify how recycling impacts our environment. Students...
Curated OER
Design a Recycling Game!
Students discover that recycling is using a product more than once so that natural resources can be saved and so that we won't need so many garbage dumps and landfills. They see that there are different ways to recycle. Students design a...
Curated OER
Recycling
Young scholars relate recycling to waste reduction. In this science lesson, students talk about the environment and how recycling certain natural resources actually saves on energy. They also discuss what type of recycling causes...
Curated OER
Reduce, Re-use, Recycle
Learners determine the importance of recycling to reduce waste, to employ trash in useful ways, and to save the environment. They estimate the percentages of landfill waste that items constitute, based on what they found in their own...
Curated OER
Recycling Statistics
In this environment activity, students look for the answers to the environmental impact of recycling in Great Britain with the statistics from the pie graph.
Curated OER
Internet Research: Methane and Waste
Students conduct Internet research to discover the causes of methane and how to implement a waste action plan. They answer worksheet questions as they search Websites. On the Eduzone site students find information on reducing their own...
Curated OER
Wise Use of Paper
Students explore the paper recycling process. They experiment with ways to conserve and recycle paper products.
Curated OER
Environment: Methane Sources
Young scholars discover how human activity is increasing the release of methane gas into the atmosphere. Woring in groups, they visit the Eduzone Website and complete worksheets. Students identify the natural and human causes of methane...
Curated OER
Everything's Connected
Students explore how trash decomposes. In this ecosystem instructional activity, students discuss new vocabulary words, such as producers and consumers, and think critically to answer how landfills work.
Curated OER
Garbage Pizza
Fourth graders explore the concept of waste management. In this recycling lesson plan, 4th graders identify materials that must be landfilled as well as items that may be recycled or reused.
Curated OER
Biodegradability
Students test a variety of plastic bags to test its biodegradability. They record their observations and discuss them once the experiment is complete. They identify materials best suited to be placed in a landfill.
Curated OER
Recycling by Composting
Middle schoolers examine the idea of recycling by composting. Using the internet, they research the benefits of composting to the environment. In groups, they collect numbers on how much food and yard waste is produced in their...
Curated OER
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...
Curated OER
Recycling
Fourth graders gain an awareness of recycling. For this science lesson plan, 4th graders become aware of how much garbage we can produce, identify landfills and their purposes, and explain how recycling saves energy and resources while...
Curated OER
Let's Talk Trash
Students identify class and types of materials in our environment. For this investigative lesson students work in groups to process information about what actions should be taken concerning solid waste.
Curated OER
The Awful 8: A Play
Students perform a play that presents the causes and effects on people and the environment of the eight major air pollutants.