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Recycling Campaign Level: Secondary --- Content: Math and science |
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Ms. Nguyen is a
secondary grades science teacher and she is collaborating with a math teacher
on a lesson on the impact of humans on their environment. They plan an
inquiry based lesson addressing science standards including formulating
questions based on observations, and proposing and comparing viable methods
of responding to an identified need or problem. They will also address math
standards. The unit question is,
“How does human consumption of resources impact the environment?” Ms. Nguyen kicks off
the unit with a whole class discussion of what students throw away every day
and what happens to it afterward. The students quickly identify the things
that they throw away frequently—paper, food, plastic water bottles and soft
drink cans. They also know that the trash is picked up and hauled to the
landfill. At this point, they are not clear about what happens next. Some
suggest that it decomposes but others think that the landfill gets full and a
new one is established. Ms. Nguyen devises two methods for students to
address these hypotheses. She first proposes
that students do a hands-on experiment with pieces of banana peel placed in
plastic bags. Some bags are left in the light,
others are kept in the dark. Water is added to some but not others. Some are
closed tightly and others are left open. A pair of students is assigned to
each bag and they observe the banana peels every day and take pictures of
them with their digital cameras. The students create a report on their
findings in their science wiki that is illustrated by the series of pictures
taken with the digital cameras. As a class, they compare the reports of the
various bags. The students come to the conclusion that the banana peels do
decompose and that water, air, and light have an effect on the process. Ms. Nguyen also asks
the students to choose several of the items that they commonly throw away and
search the Internet to find information on how fast these items decompose.
She asks them to find several sources for their information and to document
each source explaining why they believe that it is a credible source. The
students create a graph and include it in the wiki showing rates of
decomposition for each item. They quickly come to the conclusion that both of
their hypotheses are correct, trash does decompose, but many items decompose
so slowly that landfills do fill up. They decide that this is a problem that
they would like to address by conducting a campaign to make their families
and schoolmates aware of this problem and to encourage them to recycle. In math class, the
students plan to collect data on how much people throw away before and after
their campaign. They create a survey using an online tool called QuestionPro including questions about what people throw
away, how much they throw away, and if they recycle. They also ask
demographic questions so that they will be able to identify the ages of the
people responding and their job or station in life (parent, teacher,
secretary, student, sibling, etc.) They then send an email with a link to the
survey asking everyone in their school and in their homes to respond. After
gathering the survey results, they begin a campaign to make everyone aware of
how much trash is thrown away at school and at home. Their campaign has many facets
and the class divides into work groups, some creating a blog to document the
process of the project, others sending out tweets to remind everyone to
recycle, and others creating a website. At the end of the
campaign, they send out emails and ask everyone to take the survey again.
They compare the data from before and after the campaign to see if they have
had an impact. They also analyze the data by group to see who was more likely
to change—adults or youth, those at home or at school, teachers or students,
etc. They use the school website as well as email to announce their findings
to everyone. Daily, the students
use a rubric to grade themselves and each of their teammates on the quality
of their work and the amount of their contribution to the group product. Ms.
Nguyen uses these checklists as well as the group products to assess the
students’ learning and teamwork. Ms Nguyen created both the rubric and the
checklists using the Intel Assessing Projects tool. She was able to share
what she created with other teachers who were also implementing this unit. Tools used in this
scenario: Virtual collaboration:
MediaWiki Data collection:
Question pro http://www.questionpro.com/ Creation and
publication: Wetpaint Central http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/
Lifetype http://lifetype.net/
Problem Solving and
Data analysis tool: Excel Technology
Construction: Digital cameras Assessment: Intel
Assessing Projects tool: http://educate.intel.com/en/AssessingProjects
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