Research
Earth Day Trash Survey
- Grade level: Elementary, Middle School, High School
- Subject Area: Social Studies, Math
Unit Description
As part of Earth Day clean up activities, students will inventory the types of garbage that they picked up and generate statistics on what they found. Students will then develop a survey to be distributed to other classrooms to see what type of garbage they were most likely to find.
Objectives
Students will:
- Participate in an activity to benefit their community.
- Collect, organize, analyze, and describe data in a real-world situation.
- Make inferences and convincing arguments based on data analysis.
- Formulate reports suggesting an action plan to address a problem in the
community.
Materials and Resources
In developing our lessons and activities, we made some
assumptions about the hardware
and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the
LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or
activities have a computer with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and
monitor) as well as a World Wide Web browser. In the section below, we specify any "special"
hardware
or software
requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above)
and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.
-
Special hardware requirements: None.
-
Special software requirements: None.
-
Internet access: Any speed connection will be sufficient if you choose to
send out the surveys via e-mail. If you would like to do the survey using a Web
page then either a medium-speed (28,000 BPS via modem)
or high-speed (greater than 1 MBPS via network) is preferable.
Unit Lesson Plans
- Lesson One: Earth Day Participation. Students participate
in their local area's Earth Day activities. As students collect trash they keep track
of the types of articles they pick up. At the end of Earth Day activities, students
aggregate their data to develop whole-class statistics of what they found.
- Lesson Two: Survey Development and Distribution. Based on the
data they gathered during their clean-up activities, students will develop a questionnaire
to distribute to other schools. Surveys may take the form of an e-mail questionnaire or a Web
page with forms that visitors fill out.
- Lesson Three:
Data Analysis. When students have received data from their questionnaires, they
analyze the data and prepare a report to be distributed to those who participated.
Distribution may occur either via e-mail or through a report published on a Web page.
- Lesson Four: Trash Action. After students have created
their final report, they will develop action plans to prevent trash from becoming a problem
in the future. One example might be if students find high levels of fast-food
garbage in their collections, they may choose to contact local and national fast-food
restaurant owners to ask them for help in the fight against trash.
Relation to Standards
We have drawn on standards created
by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Council for the Social Studies
as resources for the Earth Day Trash Unit.
One Computer versus Many
The plans for this unit are tailored to fit teaching
situations where students
have access to several computers with an Internet connection. To accommodate
classrooms
that do not have access to a computer lab with full Internet connections,
students can
work in research groups to explore Internet sites and conduct their research.
If you have only one computer with Internet access, you
may
choose to do one of the following:
- If you have the technology, you may hook up the computer to a TV
monitor or
LCD projector. This will allow the whole class to see sites in the preliminary
stages when students are exploring sites created by other children.
- You may choose to have
students take turns working in groups using the computer with Internet access.
- You may also download files from the Internet and save them on a
disk. Now you can transfer the
files you saved on a disk to the other non-Internet computers. Installing copies of
your Web browser on all non-Internet computers will allow you to view the
pages you saved to a disk. This will not allow students to explore
hyper-links, but they will be able to access and view the information by opening
each file with the Web browser.
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