Research
Earth Day Trash Survey Unit

Lesson One
Earth Day Participation

  • Brief Description
  • Objectives
  • Materials and Resources
  • Activity Description

  • Brief Description

        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. Up to Contents





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    Objectives

        Students will:

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    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.

    1. Special hardware requirements: None.
    2. Special software requirements: None.
    3. Internet access: None.
    4. Other materials: Earth Day clean up materials, such as gloves and trash bags, and tally sheets for students to track the trash they collect (see below).
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    Activity Description

    Note: Be sure that students exercise care in participating in any trash clean-up activities. Students should wear protective gloves (preferably gardening gloves that may be reused rather than plastic, disposable gloves). You will also want to encourage students not to waste garbage bag space. Have teams of students fan out over an spot, placing a garbage bag in a central area, and then return to the bag with their trash. This will avoid the irony of using and throwing away twenty garbage bags to collect a small amount of trash.
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