Save Our Planet

The experience I decided to create for the final project is one connected to my first grade classroom. Our next PYP unit has a central idea of Living Things Share the Planet. A lesson within this 5 week unit I would like to focus on is one that shows the plight of the Albatross birds on the Midway Atoll, which is in between Japan and North America. In doing so I hope to give students a better sense of how important it is to recycle PET bottles and plastic, as this will help share the planet with other living things.

First, I would like to create a PowerPoint presentation that has many questions for the students throughout the presentation. Getting and keeping student involvement throughout the presentation aims to create a largo (slow) tempo, which should give students time to digest the info and have a say about it. And just as John Mayer’s choice to stay with a largo tempo throughout the song “Waiting on the World to Change” allowed him to touch on some tough subjects while keeping the listener attuned, the largo tempo of the presentation will also have students relaxed and feeling at ease as we look at some sad facts and pictures. The experience I am trying to create for the students is one that allows them to explore a tough topic in a safe environment.

To start the presentation I would have students predict how many Albatross chicks die every year of the 500,000 born. The answer of 200,000 should bring many gasps in the classroom. This will lead to a pizza showing up in the presentation where 2 pieces are taken from the pizza that is cut up into 5 pieces. I would then ask the students if they would like a pizza delivered to their house with 2 large pieces missing. My proposition to the students stands to rouse interest in the same way that a lyric hook does. In "A Typology of 'Hooks' in Popular Records", Gary Burns wrote that absurdity can be a hook when writing about lyric hooks. (Pg. 12) Here I have proposed an absurd question in hope of keeping interest strong, or to revive those whose minds may have started to drift off.

Next, a white circle would come up that is also separated into 5 pieces. I would then ask students to pretend the black dots that are being added to the circle are Albatross chicks. More and more black dots would fill the 5 pieces of the circle until they are all filled. I would ask the class if that is a lot of chicks and they would say yes. I would then take away two of the pieces and ask if we just lost a lot of chicks. With nearly half of the circle gone, students should say yes.

The question of how the chicks are dying would appear on the screen. Students would give their guesses which would lead to a picture of an Albatross mother regurgitating a plastic cap into its babies’ mouth. I would then point to student’s desk where many plastic bottles could be found and say the very same bottles that you use and I use, are causing these birds to die. This in a way aims to serve as a harmony hook. Gary Burns wrote “Among the more interesting harmonic hooks are those that feature a radical change but which preserve the basic chord pattern.” (Pg. 11) The radical change is that now I have brought the focus to us and what we have in our room that often times find itself inside a bird’s stomach.

However, the basic chord pattern is preserved in the lesson as my next point brings the focus back to the Albatross and its situation. I would ask the students how they think the birds get the plastic, which would lead me to show them Altered Oceans, Part 4 of 5.(Appendix 1) I would read to them the information and then explain carefully how the Western Garbage Patch and the Eastern Garbage Patch works. I would also explain that the place where many Albatross live is at an island called the Midway Atoll, which is near Hawaii. I would follow with the point that the mother Albatross goes to find food for its chicks and many times it finds what it thinks is food in these Garbage Patches. She then brings it back, feeds the garbage to its chick, only thinking it is not garbage.

Next, I would ask students if they could think of some plastic things that a mom might mistake as food. After getting their answers, I would then share a true story of an albatross chick that had red, blue and orange bottle caps in its stomach. I would then ask them if they thought that was all. Next, I would share that there was also a black spray nozzle, part of a green comb, a white golf tee and a clump of tiny dark squid beaks ensnared in a tangle of fishing line. I would then ask the students to try and remember the time they were a baby. I would then ask if it would have been good if “your mothers were tricked and thought they were feeding you food, but really your moms were feeding you something that is very bad for you?” I would then make the point of this is what has happened to the Albatross mom’s, they can not tell good food from bad food in an ocean filled with litter.

To conclude the lesson we would watch the video “The Plastic Diet” which is on Altered Oceans. Again, to maintain the largo rhythm I would stop the video and ask questions to push for some predictions. One prediction I would ask students to make is one regarding how many dead birds they think the worker will pick up in one morning. The video shows the answer to be fifty, and I could relate that number to the number of students in the classrooms on our 2^nd floor of school. For the assessment activity I would ask students to work in groups and to think of one thing they could do to help the Albatross birds and to choose one fact that surprised them. They would then make a poster that symbolized their idea to save the Albatross, as well as place a fact from the presentation (Ex. Albatross birds sometimes eat legos because they think it is food). Groups would come up and share their ideas and facts with the class, posters would be hung up around the school to spread awareness.

In “Home by Design” Susanka said we experience space not by quantity, but by interconnections between one chunk of space and another. And with that in mind, I hope my lesson focused solely on the Albatross will give student the hunger to make interconnections between what is happening to the albatross and what is happening to other animals/living things on the planet. In What Makes Beethoven Great Robert Kapilow said that Thelonius Monk and Beethoven both listened for opportunities to make something big out of a small thing. I also hope that by focusing on the small story of the Albatross throughout the 5 week unit will help students make big connections with what is happening right now, giving them a sense of ownership in what they can do to help just one species on this very large planet.