Brief Description Objectives Materials and Resources Activity Description

• Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School, High School

• Subject Area: Social Studies, Math

Brief Description

    After students have created their final report, they 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, students may choose to contact local and national fast-food restaurant owners to ask them for help in the fight against trash.
Objectives

    Students will:

• Make inferences and reasoned 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.

1. Special hardware requirements: None.
2. Special software requirements: None.
3. Internet access: None.

Activity Description

• Students brain storm ways in which they can work with the people and organizations that represent the sources to keep litter from becoming a problem in the first place. Students might elect to create posters for placement at local fast-food restaurants, conduct letter writing campaigns to headquarters of national organizations, and/or present their findings at the city council meeting. Students should develop specific requests or suggestions to make to the organizations or individuals when they contact them. They might suggest to fast-food chains that they develop more prominent anti-litter icons on their packaging or conduct public education about fast-food litter.

• Once an approach has been decided upon, organize students into groups to carry out the approach.