How our Actions Affect the Earth's Resources and People

This week we continued on from where we left off before the holidays, with our third unit of the year about natural resources. We began by reviewing different types of natural resources and took some time to sort out them out as either renewable or non-renewable.

After reading the story of the Lorax, we talked about different types of pollution that we heard about in the story, or have noticed ourselves. The students worked in two groups to identify different causes of air and water pollution. Later on in the unit, we will discuss ways to stop or to create less pollution.

Finally, we unscrambled and looked closely at the central idea and lines of inquiry for this unit.

After some discussion about what each of these meant, we focussed on looking into what we can do about reducing, reusing and recycling. To begin we did a SEE, THINK, WONDER activity looking into how trash is handled and disposed of at school. Then in order to research how much trash each of us produces within a week, the students were each given a plastic bag to collect all or their trash, at home and at school for the following week. Everything that they themselves would normally throw away, except for food waste is to be collected and carried with them each day back and forth from home to school until next Friday, January 18th. Once the trash has been collected, we will examine it closely to see, which can be reused or recycled. Let's find out next week, how much trash 8 second grade students produce in one week!