Content Area Standards

Language and Literacy:
Science:
  • 4.L.1.3 Explain how humans can adapt their behavior to live in changing habitats (e.g., recycling wastes, establishing rain gardens, planting trees and shrubs to prevent flooding and erosion).

Social Studies:
  • 3.C&G.2.3 Apply skills in civic engagement and public discourse (school, community)
  • 3.C&G.2.2 Exemplify how citizens contribute to the well-being of the community’s natural environment.

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Objectives

Students will be able to:
  • Demonstrate how to apply skills in civic engagement to better the community’s environment.
  • Research local resources and interact with the community in order to advocate and implement environmentally friendly chages school-wide.​

Concepts

Sustainability - Civic Responsibility - Action - Solutions - Change

Prior Preperation

  • Where their food comes from:
    • Students have already journaled some cafeteria solutions on how to educate their peers on where their food comes from.
  • What are the environmental, natural resources, financial, human, and animal impacts of non-consumable waste.
    • Students have already done research on what is the best recyclable material that has the least impact on the environment and living things.
  • The need for civil responsibility to ensure sustainable waste disposal in order to protect natural resources
    • Students have already received resources on composting, the ugly food movement, how to make a school garden, and reusing school waste for hog feed.

Prerequsite Knowledge

  • Where their food comes from:
    • Students have already journaled some cafeteria solutions on how to educate their peers on where their food comes from.
  • What are the environmental, natural resources, financial, human, and animal impacts of non-consumable waste.
    • Students have already done research on what is the best recyclable material that has the least impact on the environment and living things.
  • The need for civil responsibility to ensure sustainable waste disposal in order to protect natural resources
    • Students have already received resources on composting, the ugly food movement, how to make a school garden, and reusing school waste for hog feed

Assessment

​Students will write a letter to the school board/superintendent about making sustainable changes in the cafeteria.
Each group students will make a PSA modeled after the one minute juniors - UNICEF

Accomodations

Universal Design in place to accommodate exceptionalities.

Materials and Resources


  • Howcast. (June 14, 2010). How to Start a Green Initiative at School. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuNaaPQ0hAQ

Instructional Procedure

Let's Make a Change
​What Do You Already Know?
  • Recap of unit: You now know a lot about how to be a responsible consumer, and what it means to be a responsible producer.  What have you learned?
  • We are already on the road to becoming solutionaries!  You have already done some great research and gained amazing knowledge to make a difference in your school, and maybe your neighbor schools will catch on too!
  • Inform students that they have already begun their research through projects in prior lessons.  



Recap Completed Student Research:    
  • How to make sure good food is eaten, not tossed!
    • The ugly food movement
    • How to make a school garden
    • Educating and raising awareness among peers as to where food comes from.
    • Food Cowboy - Redirects food destined for landfill
    • Food bank - Receives food from grocery stores that are destined for landfill
    • DC Central Kitchen -  Recover foods from farms and distributes to community members in need.
  • What to do with the food waste we produce
    • Composting
    • Hog feed
  • How  and why to reduce packaging and one time use items
    • Developed true cost assessment of materials based on natural resource extraction, financial considerations, and the consequences on the environment, human and animal health.
    • Has your city or state alreay banned plastic shopping bags?
    • Kids making a difference!
    • Reducing Waste at School
  • What to do with the non-consumable waste we produce

One of the largest waste producers in our school is our cafeteria.
  • Ask students what issues they see in their school cafeteria.
    • Conclude that there are four issues of concern
      • Group 1: How to make sure food is eaten, not tossed!
        • Ideas: Community Outreach Program, Food awareness
      • Group 2: What to do with food waste
        • Ideas: Hog feed, Composting
      • Group 3: How reduce packaging and one-time-use items use in the cafeteria
        • Ideas: Replace one use items with resuable items and compostable materials
      • Group 4: How to divert non-consumable waste from the landfill
        • Ideas: Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle 

Group students by what issue they are driven by.  Ideally groups will be 3-4 students in size. Additional groups may be added if students have a particular interest or concern that isn’t covered in one of the four groups.

Explain what the groups will do
  • Explain that each group has it’s own goal, but all students will all be working towards the common goal of making our school more eco-friendly.
  • Watch video How To Start a Green Initiative.  Inform students that we will be taking similar steps to what the kids did in the video.  Ask students what does it mean to go green?
    • Interactively create a flowchart or anchor chart for students to refer to throughout their process of creating a solution.  
      • Plan of action:
        1. Identify the problem
          • Conduct an audit of our cafeteria.  
          • Interview cafeteria staff
          • Interview principal
          • Make a timeline
        2. Research
          • Read about what other schools/kid solutionaries have done
          • Local organizations that share our goal
        3. Reach out
          • Contact organizations to see if they can help
          • Ask principal and other school leaders for their support
        4. Raise awareness
          • PSA videos
          • Signage around school
          • Invite guest speakers to educate the school on our mission and the problem that it arose from.
          • Invite other students, teacher, and principal to see small solutions in our classroom
        5. Put it into action
          • Collaborate on a written letter to the superintendent
          • Collect signatures
          • Practice the change you want to see           
  • Inform students that they are all going to make videos in order to share their hard work and inspire more children to be solutionaries!

    Ready, Set, Action!
  • Guide students to make independently progress through their plan of action.  Allow for time in class for groups to meet.  Meet with groups individually to monitor progress, make suggestions, lend help, and answer questions.