Room 102 Going Green

Ms. Jamie reading a book about recycling to her students

Students working on the recycling sort

Going Green Lesson in Room 102

Today I taught a lesson to my first graders about taking care of the environment. I started out reading the first and fifth chapters of a book called Earth Day: Keeping Our Planet Clean by Elaine Landau. It was all about the pollution that happens to our Earth and how we can take better care of it. Then we had a short discussion about what the students could do to take care of the Earth. Many students said they would recycle paper, clean up the litter in their yard, and ride a bike or walk instead of driving to school.

Students watching a recycling video

After that, we watched a couple videos from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/. Both were called Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The first one showed real children taking care of the Earth by reducing the amount of water they used, reusing papers by drawing on both sides, and recycling items such as cans and bottles. It also mentioned many other ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. The other video was a short rap about recycling.

After the video, I had my students cut out and sort pictures of objects into categories to show where they would recycle them. The three categories were paper, plastic, and metal. Objects they cut out included: soup cans, pop cans, clothes hangers, water bottles, lined paper, and newspaper. The students had a lot of fun cutting and sorting. We have a paper recycling bin and a plastic recycling bin in our classroom, so it was really cool seeing them make the connection between the sort and our classroom.

Recycling sort

After today, my students seem really pumped about recycling! I am really excited to hear about what they do at home to take care of the earth.