My Visit to My Sister’s Third Grade Class
For my final project, my goal was to work with kids and teach them some of what I have learned this semester about our environmental crisis. My second goal was to observe which parts of my interaction with them get them excited and forced them to be most engaged. I visited my sister’s third grade class last week, and this was my experience….
After we talked together about the dangers of wasting energy and emitting carbon into our atmosphere, we made a list of ways that they are already working to lower their carbon footprint and what they might do in the future.
Next we completed an art activity together. Each student was given his or her own paper light switch cover with the message “Save our planet” and “Please turn me off!” As a class, we discussed what we might draw on our light switches. Most of the kids decided to portray parts of the environment we don’t want to hurt such as trees. Others chose convey pollution and ways that wasting energy is bad. Here are some of their final results:
I have done a great deal of reflecting since my classroom visit, and my sister and I came up with a number of ways the students can lower their classroom energy waste.
1) List of Internet resources for teachers (my sister will share the list with her colleagues)
Teacher Internet Resources:
• Glacier -Information on ice, Antarctica and the Arctic.
• The Everglades -Grades 4-8 – This site from the Discovery Channel presents a highly visual treatment of the Everglades ecosystem, why it is important, and how it is deteriorating.
• Friends of the Earth -Learn what you can do to be a better citizen of our earth
• Global Response -an education and activist oriented non-profit organization dedicated to disseminating detailed case information to students, teachers, and Eco-clubs about the most impending environmental crises. Also organizes international student letter-writing campaigns in response to these environmental emergencies. Classroom packets are available for teachers
• Green -Global Rivers Environmental Education Network
• Water Science for Kids -Everything you need to know about water. Activity Center, Glossary of Terms, Earth’s Water, Water Use Information, Picture Gallery, etc. Brought to you by the US Geological Survey
2) Kid-oriented environmental website list posted next to the classroom computer. When student behave well, they can earn computer time. This now makes caring up about the environment associated with positivity and reward.
Kid Websites
• EekoWorld -PBS website where kids can create their own “EekoCreature” and help overcome environmental problems (age 6-9)
• Nature Challenge for Kids -David Suzuki Foundation offers simples ways kids can protect nature and provides links to other kids websites
• Kids Planet -Species fact sheet, web of life chart, wildlife adoption center
• Eco-Kids -Earth Day Canada’s environmental education program. Helps kids understand the impact of their actions and encourages kids to make decisions and form their own opinions
• The Green Squad -NRDC website. Focuses on how to save energy in the classroom
• The Big Blue Bus -A place kids can learn about the world’s water sources. Kids age 7-16 can sign up to be “water wizards”
• Global Warming Kids Site -EPA site explains global warming and its causes on a kid friendly level
• I buy different -Teaches kids about how the things they buy (or their parents buy them) impact the environment
3) Tracking the energy waste of the fluorescent lighting in the classroom: Next to the light switch at the front of the classroom, there will be a chart where the class will keep track of the amount of time they keep the light on and turn them off. The goal is for the students to decrease the amount they leave the lights on as time progresses. The weekly totals will be graphed, and the goal for the class is to watch that line go down over the last six weeks of school. This ties into the students’ math unit this year because they have learned about simple graphs.
4) Scrap Paper Bin: The students will keep a bin in the classroom where they will keep any old hand outs of written on paper that has one clean side. This is one step better than recycling!
5) Environmental Awareness Section in Reading Corner: My sister keeps her books organized into sections such as “science books” and “history books.” She is starting to collect books for a “Green” section.
6) Wasted Styrofoam trays: My calculations show that my sisters class of 20 students use about 6,660 lunch trays in just one school year. To me, this number is frightening. Although it would be ideal of the trays to be plastic and reusable, that is a longer term goal. In the mean time, my sister’s class will attempt to reuse the Styrofoam trays for as many different meals and days as they can. After each meal, it will be a student’s job to collect the trays from his or her classmates and the stack will be kept in the classroom ready for the next meal. At minimum, the number of trays used yearly could be cut in half.
Those are just a few of the solutions I came up with for my sister to implement in her classroom. I plan to visit her students again later in the year and take our energy discussion a step further, and see what progress they have made as a class to lower their carbon emissions. I had an incredibly fun time working on this project and I learned a lot in the process.
