Reducing Waste (3 of 3)

Welcome to Change is Simple’s Online Learning Platform!

Overview: Today is a review of this unit’s information that was covered in the previous two lessons. Access to those two lessons is at the bottom of this page. Today’s activity is a set of questions through a form that is based on the topics from the 2 previous lessons.

Grade Level: K-6

Theme: Waste Reduction

Supervision needed? No

Essential Questions: 

Materials Needed:

Standards:

Today’s Activity:

This week we covered a few ways that we could reduce our waste production. We’d love for you to complete this reflection through Google Forms as today’s activity.

If you can’t access the page above, click on the link below to take you to the Google Form directly!

Not here on Monday or Wednesday? Here’s a refresher!

Check out these videos to get a sense of what we talked about.

Monday

Wednesday

Did you enjoy today’s activity? Stay tuned for more, and in the meantime…

Send us a photo of yourself doing today's activity and if you would like, please share your name(s) and where you are from with cisonline@changeissimple.org

Waste Management

Welcome to Change is Simple’s Online Learning Platform!

Overview: Today we will be learning about sorting our trash (we call it waste), learning what bin certain items go into, and what alternatives we can make to our lives to produce LESS waste. Please enjoy today’s activity!

Grade Level:  3-5

Theme: Earth Systems

Supervision needed? No

Essential Questions: 

• Why is reducing our waste important?

• What is the best “R” action we can take to reduce how much waste we create?

Materials Needed:

• One sheet of white paper OR the printed PDF of the worksheet

• Computer, iPad, or phone

Standards:

• Ecological Health 13.4 Identify individual and community responsibility in ecological health.

• Ecological Health 14.2 Identify ways the physical environment is related to individual and community health

• 14.3 List practices and products that make living safer.

Activity 1

step 1: reduce, reuse & recycle

In today’s first activity, we are going to be watching a video! In this video we are going to be learning about how we sort our waste. While watching this video, use the worksheet below to write down the items that are described during the video! Feel free to pause the video when you need to write down an item.

Once the video is done, your job will be to come up with alternatives to each of those items. What could you use instead of that item?

             Item #                                                                             Alternative?

Item #1 _________                                                                __________

Item #2 _________                                                                __________

Item #3 _________                                                                __________

Item #4 _________                                                                __________

Item #5 _________                                                                __________

Step 2: alternatives

Watch this video about alternatives and how Eric applied some changes to his life that helps him have a positive impact on the environment!

step 3: reflection

Question 1: Which is the most important of the three R’s? 

Question 2: Choose an item and then describe why its alternative will have a positive impact on the environment. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Question 3: What is one alternative that you want to apply to your life? Why do you want to apply that change?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

step 4: additional learning

Want to learn more? We have a few resources for you if you’re interested in further learning!

Interested in learning about the specific types of plastics talked about in today’s lesson and how to sort them? Check our our awesome Change is Simple Video on Plastics!!

Did you enjoy today’s activity? Stay tuned for more, and in the meantime…

Send us a photo of yourself doing today's activity and if you would like, please share your name(s) and where you are from with cisonline@changeissimple.org

Watersheds

Welcome to Change is Simple’s Online Learning Platform!

Overview: In this activity, students will create a watershed using a piece of paper and coloring materials. Students will follow along to an instructors direction to learn what is a watershed, and what you may find in one. After creating the watershed, students will conduct an experiment to understand where water travels through a watershed after a rainstorm. This lesson will highlight how water brings pollution from roads, construction zones, farms and residential areas into our lakes, streams, and oceans. 

Theme: Water pollution, natural resources

Grade Level: 2-5

Supervision needed? No

Essential Questions:

• What is a watershed?

• How does pollution travel though and enter a watershed?

• How does pollution impact a watershed?

Materials Needed:

• Paper

• Coloring utensils

• Spray bottle with water

Standards

• 3-LS4-4. Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.

• 2-ESS2-1. Compare multiple solutions designed to slow or prevent wind or water from changing the shape of the land.*

• K-2-ETS1-2. Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.

Background:

What is a watershed?

A watershed is an area or ridge of land that separates the flow of water to different rivers, streams, and lakes. All of the water that falls over a watershed will flow to the same basins (lakes and ponds). When rain falls, or snow melts, that water travels downhill over dirt, roads, and farms carrying whatever it comes in contact with. That means that the water collects and carries pollution to nearby lakes and oceans!

What is pollution?

Pollution is any substance or item that is harmful to the environment it is in. Water pollution takes many different shapes. If rainfall or snowmelt travels over a farm, it can collect fertilizers from the soil and carry them to lakes and oceans. This fertilizer can harm aquatic life. Similarly, oil from cars on the road can harm aquatic life if it gets carried to oceans, lakes. etc.

student led experiment

Activity Duration: 15 Minutes

Materials Needed:

1. One sheet white paper

2. Assorted Markers

3. Spray bottle with water

Step 1: Set up experiment.

Crumple up a sheet of white paper with both hands, and then lay out and semi-flatten.

Color the ridges of your watershed in purple.

To create the towns in your watershed, draw three small towns (red) at three places in the valleys of your watershed. (A valley is a low point of land between mountains).

Next, draw a large city (orange) close to one of the towns. The towns and city are locations in our watershed where we often find large amounts of oil on roads from cars, and pollution from people.

Next, draw four farms (green) in different flat places throughout the watershed. Most farmers use fertilizers to help their crops (fruits and vegetables) grow! These fertilizers are helpful for the farms, but harmful if they end up in our waterways, causing a dangerous process called eutrophication. To learn more about eutrophication, click here!

Finally, draw a coal mine (black) near one of the cities. Coal is a major fossil fuel. The process of mining coal from the earth usually contaminates nearby waters with highly acidic water and metals. To learn more about the process of coal mining , click here!

Step 2: Create your hypothesis.

Soon, you are going to take your spray bottle or pipet and create rainfall over your watershed. Before you do this, you must make a hypothesis as to what will happen when you conduct this experiment!

Question 1: Where will the precipitation end up after the storm ends?

Question 2: What will happen to the pollution that comes from the coal mine, farms, and cities/roads?

Step 4: Create a rainstorm over your watershed!

Take your spray bottle and start to spray water on all areas of your watershed. Carefully observe the changes that occur. Be creative! You can make certain areas heavy rainfall areas and others lighter areas to observe the differences. Record your observations on a sheet of paper (pictures or words!)

Step 5: Reflection

1. Was your hypothesis (guess) from step 3 accurate?

2. What happened to the bodies of water after a serious rainstorm occurred over the cities and farms?

3. How could this runoff impact our watershed?

Now that you have completed this experiment, you hopefully understand that when it rains, pollution travels from our major towns and cities, farms, and industrial areas into our rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans. This can harm animals that live in the water and prevent humans from having clean drinking water. Let’s brainstorm some ways that we can help protect our watersheds from pollution!

The Change is Simple team has come up with three ways to help you get started:

Ride your bike or walk instead of riding in a car! The less we drive, the less oil ends up on our roads.

Pick up trash, even if it’s not yours! The best place for trash is in your trash bin, NOT outside where it can blow into our waterways!

Support local farmers that use little or no fertilizers! The less fertilizers used, the less that ends up in our oceans.

Stay tuned for more activities! In the meantime, send us a photo of yourself doing today's activity and if you would like to share your name(s), and where you are from to cisonline@changeissimple.org