Climate Action: Many Voices Answer
a Single Call

Title of Project: Climate Action: Many Voices Answer a Single Call

What will happen to a plastic bag and a paper bag when they are buried outside?

Schools and Teachers

Clayton Huey Elementary School Teacher: Austin Everhart Co-Teacher: Maryse Parent

ENL Proficiency Level | ENL Program | Standards | Technology

Transitioning, Expanding | Stand-Alone, Integrated ENL/Science | 3SL4, 3SL5, 3L6 | Vooks, Kahoot, Google Earth

Assessments

Students were frequently asked to respond to stories using quick stop and jot or draw, where they would write or draw reactions to the text, or ideas and key details they felt were important. When making predictions, students were asked to write ideas on their own, and after we conferenced about our writing, focusing on the editing process. We also used Kahoot to play review games for reading comprehension, and with specific vocabulary related to our discussions and readings.

Description

After reading various texts (specifically using the Vooks resource for animated read aloud(s)), students will begin to learn about first-hand experiences of people working for sustainable communities. We watched Discovery Education videos and had rich discussions afterwards covering topics such as sustainability, recycling, pollution, plastic production, global warming, and other environmentally related issues. An experiment was posed and students were asked to predict what would happen when we buried a plastic bag and a paper bag and retrieved them one month later. Students made predictions and recorded their ideas about what would happen to each bag. We later dug the bags up, examined them, and reported our findings. We concluded with other videos and related readings, and continue to discuss environmental issues and sustainability efforts in our communities and around the world.

Content

I can make predictions about events in our natural world.

Language

I can describe and share an experiment and the results.

Technology

I can use texts from Vooks to gain information and inspiration for ways to help other people and my community.

Student work

Presentation slide showing landfills around the world

Procedure

Using Vooks, students were immersed into the world of Wangari Maathai and her story for a better future in her home country of Kenya. We also used traditional texts, such as “One Plastic Bag: Isatau Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia” to engage students and broaden the idea of pollution and building sustainable communities on a global scale. Students were exposed, over multiple learning sessions, to various educationally rich video content. We used Google Earth to visit the locations of our Vook and traditional text, and explored our communities as well, noticing pollution and plastic all over the world. We also used Google Earth to visit landfills in home countries, and discussed the impact our reliance on plastic has caused. For all writing activities, students were provided with sentence frames, visual aids, and repeated choral readings of specific academic vocabulary. We relied on repeated readings and discussions to reinforce concepts and broaden our use of new language.

Resources and Other Materials

Paper vs. Plastic handout
Vooks: Wangari's Trees of Peace
One Plastic Bag: Teacher Resources
Kahoot
Google Earth: The Gambia

Reflection

Overall we felt very pleased with our activity and the overall experience of implementation. We used multiple sessions to build background knowledge and prepare our experiment. In reflecting on the experience, we feel this was a key to the success of our students and the magnitude of its impact. We feel that more experience and push-in support during science lessons would have helped the project, as we noticed students needed more support in writing about their predictions. We worked well together, and did need lunch periods to work on our ideas, and we would have liked to implement more parts together, but the structure of our groups didn’t always allow for this. The students really enjoyed the activity of digging and working outside. We planned this effectively and modeled student behavior prior to going outside, which was critical to our execution.

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