Illustrative Mathematics
US Garbage, Version 1
An interesting example of a discrete function and how it is applies to the real world. This could easily make a good collaborative lesson with an environmental science class. Practice reading a table and drawing a scatter plot make up...
Curated OER
Trash Talkin
Young scholars investigate recycling at several scales, including local, state, national and global. They become aware of recycling, re-use, reduce efforts and policies. Students read the article Where Does Your Garbage Go. They look up...
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Garbage or Art?
The three R's are, reduce, reuse, and recycle. Third graders use recycled materials to design and create an environmentally themed piece of art. They discuss and examine major art works that were created using recycled materials, then...
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Treacherous Trash
Students recognize the harmful effects people have on the environment. In this environmental lesson, students simulate water pollution clean-up by using tangled objects and untangling them in a cooperative group. Students identify why...
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Disposing Garbage
Students explore environmental cleanliness by completing a worksheet in class. In this waste management lesson, students identify the technological advances in society and how they increase waste production our planet is unable to deal...
California Academy of Science
Where Do I Put My Trash?
Where does the trash go after you put it in the garbage can? The class discusses sustainability, recycling, compost, and landfills as they play as fun relay game. In teams, they race to be the fastest group to successfully sort their...
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What is Trash?
Students consider what garbage is and where it ends up. In this recycling lesson, students read excerpts from Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little as they consider methods to reduce wastefulness.
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Classroom Trash Audit
Students investigate solid waste. In this environmental lesson, students collect their own garbage for a day and analyze the weight and the percentage of recyclable items in their trash.
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Trash City
Students work together to build a trash city. They collect items that would go into a landfill to help them build their city. They discuss ways to cut down on garbage.
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How Long Does Trash Last
Students work in cooperative groups to estimate how long trash lasts in a landfill. They study environmental consequences of not recycling and use graph-making software to create a graph that illustrates the lifespan of trash items...
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What Can We Do About Trash in Our Community?
Fourth graders examine how to deal with the amount of trash in their community. They discover alternate ways of managing waste. They develop their own solutions to the problem.
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Where is Away?
Focusing on where are garbage goes once we dispose of it, learners explore environmental concerns. Using a clear format, this lesson leads learners through a discussion of waste reduction, recycling, and composting. Then, they discuss...
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Waste Management
Four different activities focus on the amount of trash generated and how humans can better manage waste. Learners analyze two days' worth of household garbage, test materials for biodegradability, and rate recyclability of various...
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Recycling in Palm Beach County
Students investigate the recycling program in Palm Beach County. In this recycling lesson, students discuss how garbage is processed and identify the proper color-coded bins to place recyclables in.
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School Yard Waste
Fourth graders examine the types of garbage that they collect on the playground. They collect the information in a spreadsheet and create a graph that displays the number of types of trash found. They design and monitor a playground...
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Related Lessons Break It
Students brainstorm about the kinds of things that they use at home and school each day. They consider the types of materials out of which these things are made. Keep a list of their repsonses on a large sheet of paper or on the blackboard.
PBS
Waste Audit
Does everything in the trash can belong there? Conduct a waste audit with your class by collecting a day's worth of garbage, separating it into recyclables, non-recyclables, or food waste, and properly distributing what they find into...
Chymist
Pressure-Volume Relationships: Experiments with 140-mL Syringe
Learners examine Boyle's Law by analyzing experimental results with a hands-on lesson that provides a set of four experiments that illustrate the relationship between pressure and volume of gases. Groups analyze results using...
Curated OER
TE Activity: Trash Talkin'
Young scholars collect and categorize solid waste produced in the classroom. They weigh the waste that has been collected over one week's time, and separate it into recyclable and non-recyclable waste. They talk about the role of...
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After the Garbage Can: Where Does Our Trash Go?
Young scholars explore how waste disposal has changed over time and what the current issues are. In this disposal activity students collect data and create graphs.
Curated OER
Police patrol the city's garbage
Students debate the pros and cons of police searching the trash of suspected drug dealers. Students collect background information, and students interview city officials and garbage collectors. Students develop a strategic plan for...
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Is there Treasure in Trash?
More people, more garbage! Young environmentalists graph population growth against the amount of garbage generated per year and find a linear model that best fits the data. This is an older resource that could benefit from more recent...
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Erase Waste
Students brainstorm a list of objects that are thrown in the trash each day and come up with alternative uses for the trash. They design a 3-D poster to display their ideas to recycle and reuse items creately to personally erase waste.
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Consequences of Garbage
First graders consider the problem of too much garbage in America. In this garbage use lesson, 1st graders discuss ways to decrease garbage in the United States and complete a coloring sheet.