Teacher’s Name: Maggie Weber
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Number of Students: 18
Number of
Days: 3
Length of Class Period: 45 minutes, Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Type of school: Parochial Lutheran school in Nebraska, near the Platte River
Parts of the Unit:
Air Pollution
Recycling
Reducing the use of water
Prior Units:
So far, my class has learned about traffic safety and what the safe way to get
to school is. They have learned about trains and how to safely cross train
tracks. Next, our health unit will be switching gears be learning about pollution,
saving water and electricity, and recycling.
Need for Unit:
Children need to learn about air pollution and saving the environment through
the conservation of water, and recycling because of the prevalence in our world right
now. Children need to be taught at a young age the importance of taking care of our
world, home and Earth so that future generations are not faced with the global
impacts of pollution that our current generation is facing. If children learn now about
our need for conservation and caution with our earth, then we have a heightened
chance of our earth repairing from the current and previous generation’s damages.
Air pollution specifically is important for children to learn, not simply because
it will help the earth, but it will help our children. Air pollution can cause extensive
damage to a child’s health. In infants to toddlers, air pollution can cause Alveolar
development, a high respiratory rate and even respiratory death. In children ages
two to six, which will be the age of my kindergarteners, air pollution can cause
Alveolar development, a chronic cough and bronchitis, reduced lung function,
wheezing and asthma attacks, and respiratory related school absences. Although
these unfortunate facts would never be taught to my class, it is important to point out
that their involvement in taking care of the environment will help their own personal
health, and those of future generations.
Goals of Unit:
The purpose of this unit is to instruct students on ways to help improve, help,
and maintain the environment. Students will be informed of the importance of
reducing, reusing, and recycling, the importance of conserving our water, and of
reducing the use of our pollution through not littering. Students will then be able to
put into practice what we have learned.
Unit Standards:
2.2.1 Identify how the family influences personal health practices and behaviors.
2.2.2 Identify what the school can do to support personal health practices and
behaviors.
2.2.3 Describe how the media can influence health behaviors.
7.2.1 Demonstrate healthy practices and behaviors to maintain or improve personal
health.
7.2.2 Demonstrate behaviors that avoid or reduce health risks.
Objectives:
TSWBAT identify ways to help reduce the amount of pollution.
TSWBAT identify ways that pollution are prevalent in their life. (i.e. school buses,
cars, trains, tractors, etc.)
TSWBAT give examples of ways to recycle in their daily lives. (i.e. paper at school,
milk cartons at home, etc.)
TSWBAT identify what can and cannot be recycled.
TSWBAT identify ways to reduce the usage of water and electricity.
TSWBAT give clear ways that they personally can reduce their usage of water and
electricity (ie. turning the water off when brushing teeth, turning off lights when
leaving a room, etc.)
Content Outline:
1) Air Pollution
a) What is pollution
i) Causes
ii) Results
(1) hurts the earth
(2) hurts our health
b) What can we do to help stop pollution
(1) not littering
(2) picking up after ourselves
2) Recycling
a) What is recycling?
i) Why do we need to recycle?
ii) What can be recycled?
iii) How do we recycle?
3) Reducing water and electricity
a) Why do we need to reduce our water usage
i) Droughts
ii) Good stewardship
iii) Saving the environment
b) What can we do to reduce our water usage
c) Turning off the water when brushing teeth, etc.
Instructional Methods and Strategies:
I will use a variety of teaching methods including visual learning, through a
short video, hands on learning through the recycling activity, physical learning
through pretending to be a fish and auditory learning through my explanations and
descriptions of lessons.
Materials/Resources/Equipment:
Clean, empty trash
Big, giant, blue paper
The book Lil’s Legacy of Litter
Trash bag
Four big bins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il1RX6_h9Xc (Video on recycling)
Lunch cart to carry large bins.
Healthy plant
Unhealthy plant
Watering can
Brown paper bags
Paper, with lines on the bottom
Lesson Plans by Day:
Day 1 - Air Pollution:
Goal:
2.2.1 Identify how the family influences personal health practices and behaviors.
2.2.2 Identify what the school can do to support personal health practices and
behaviors.
2.2.3 Describe how the media can influence health behaviors.
7.2.2. Demonstrate behaviors that avoid or reduce health risks.
Objectives:
TSWBAT identify ways to help reduce the amount of pollution.
TSWBAT identify ways that pollution are prevalent in their life. (i.e. school buses,
cars, trains, tractors, etc.)
Adaptions:
No adaptations are needed.
Materials:
SmartBoard
Clean, empty trash
Big, giant, blue paper
The book Lil’s Legacy of Litter
Procedure:
1. Set/Hook:
a.
To start off the lesson, I will talk to my students about pollution. I will ask
them if they know what litter is, and then explain to them how there are different
types of litter.
2. Transition:
.
As a bit of a longer transition, I will read to them the book Lil’s Legacy of
Litter, which is a book about litter in parks, and I will explain to them how litter can be
a form of pollution in our world. We will then talk about the Platte River, and how
litter in the river can be pollution for the fish.
3. Main Lesson:
.
For the main lesson, I will have the class gather around an empty area of the
classroom, on the floor is a giant, long strip of blue paper (the kind that comes on
spools that are huge). On the blue paper is trash, such as cereal boxes and milk
jugs. The paper is covered in this trash.
a.
I explain to the class that this paper is the Platte River, and the river has been
polluted with trash! I will ask if they think fish can easily swim with all this trash in the
way. They’ll say yes or no, and I will then say, Well, let’s find out! Then, I will have
the kids all line up and pretend to be fish trying to swim around the trash. To do so,
they will crawl around on the paper, however, because of the trash, they will have a
difficult time.
b.
When everyone has had a turn, we will talk about how God has placed us on
this earth to be good citizens and to take care of His land. This includes keeping our
rivers from being polluted. We will then get a giant trash bag and collect all the trash
from the river until it’s all clean. Then, I will have my little fish try to swim through the
river again and see how much easier it is!
4. Transition:
.
Once everyone has swum through the river, I will bring the attention back to
the front of the classroom where we will then review.
5. Conclusion:
.
As a review, we will recap everything we discussed that day: how we need to
keep our lands and rivers from being polluted, and how as part of being on God’s
earth, we take care of what He has given us. As a final “cliffhanger” of sorts, I will
tell my kids that on Wednesday, we will use the trash we picked up from our river for
a project!
Student Assessment/Evaluation:
There will be no formal assessment for this lesson, however, throughout the lesson, I
will be informally assessing my students to make sure they are understanding the
material and it is presented in a clear manner for them.
Assignment:
There will be no assignment.
Day 2 - Recycling
Goal:
2.2.1 Identify how the family influences personal health practices and behaviors.
2.2.2 Identify what the school can do to support personal health practices and
behaviors.
7.2.2. Demonstrate behaviors that avoid or reduce health risks.
Objectives:
TSWBAT give examples of ways to recycle in their daily lives. (i.e. paper at school,
milk cartons at home, etc.)
TSWBAT identify what can and cannot be recycled.
Adaptions:
No adaptations are needed.
Materials:
Trash bag
Four big bins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il1RX6_h9Xc (Video on recycling)
Lunch cart to carry large bins.
Procedure:
1. Set/Hook:
a.
To catch my students’ attention, I will take the giant bag of (clean) trash from
our lesson on Monday and dump it on the floor in front of them. I will tell them how
great it was that we cleaned up our polluted river, but that now we have to deal with
our trash we picked up? So, what do we do with it? I will let students give ideas
until we reach the topic of recycling.
2. Transition:
.
As a transition, I will point out bins, there will be four bins, paper, plastic,
aluminum and cardboard. I will tell the class that we will separate our trash into
those four bins.
3. Main Lesson:
.
To start, I will explain what recycling is and how it works. Once I use my
words, I will play a video on recycling to better explain how it works for those kids
who are visual learners.
a.
After the video, I will tell my kids how I want each one of them to collect one
of each of the four categories. And put them in the bin that is labeled
correctly. Each label has the word and a corresponding photo, and I will also point
to each bin and say what goes where for the kids who are slow readers.
b.
I will then give them time to separate the trash into the correct bins.
c.
Once they have separated the trash into the correct bins, I will talk about how,
here at school, we have janitors to collect our recycling, and at our homes we have
trashmen that come and pick up the trash, and how even in some homes, we have
to take the recycling ourselves to the recycling place.
4. Transition:
.
To transition, I will grab a lunch cart, put all the bins on it, and have the kids
follow me, so that we can take our bins out the the recycling bins behind the school.
5. Conclusion:
.
To conclude, I will have them gather around the bins as we dump it into the
giant bin, and then we will talk again about how recycling is good for the earth,
because it stops there from being more trash than necessary, and how recycling is a
way of taking care of the earth. We will then go back inside for our next class.
Student Assessment/Evaluation:
There will be no formal assessment for this lesson, however, throughout the lesson, I
will be informally assessing my students to make sure they are understanding the
material and it is presented in a clear manner for them.
Assignment:
There will be no assignment.
Day 3 - Reducing the Use of Water
Goal:
2.2.1 Identify how the family influences personal health practices and behaviors.
2.2.2 Identify what the school can do to support personal health practices and
behaviors.
2.2.3 Describe how the media can influence health behaviors.
7.2.1 Demonstrate healthy practices and behaviors to maintain or improve personal
health.
7.2.2 Demonstrate behaviors that avoid or reduce health risks.
Objectives:
TSWBAT identify ways to reduce the usage of water and electricity.
TSWBAT give clear ways that they personally can reduce their usage of water and
electricity (ie. turning the water off when brushing teeth, turning off lights when
leaving a room, etc.
Adaptions:
No adaptations are needed.
Materials:
Healthy plant
Unhealthy plant
Watering can
Big, giant blue paper “river”
Brown paper bags
Paper, with lines on the bottom
Procedure:
1. Set/Hook
a.
I will set two plants down in front of the students, one that is green and alive,
and one that is browning and withered. I will ask them what the difference is
between the two. We will talk about how one is healthy and one is not healthy, and
how the main difference is that one has been watered consistently and the other has
not.
2. Transition:
.
For a transition, I will talk about how all plants need water, but sometimes, we
go through something called a drought, which is when we don’t get enough rain, and
when this happens, we need to conserve our water usage.
3. Main Lesson:
.
To give an example of what a drought is, I will bring back out our Platte River
from Monday. Except, this time, instead of trash in the river, there are sand bars!
a.
I will ask my students to be fish, once again, except this time, there are sand
bars in our river, which are places where water no longer flows. I will ask them to be
fish and try to swim around the sand bars, but instead of going one at a time, there
will be multiple fish in the river at a time. This will show how without water, fish lose
their living space.
b.
Once all the kids have been through the river and felt the congestion of a tight
water supply, I will ask my kids to help me fold our river in half, like a hot dog. I will
explain to my kids how in some rivers, instead of sand bars, the river shrinks and
gets narrower. I will then again have them try to swim through the river, but with it
being so narrow, they will have a difficult time staying on the paper.
c.
Finally, I will bring the attention back to the front and talk about how important
it is to save our water, and not use as much. We will then brain storm as a class
what we can do that saves water.
4. Transition:
.
As a transition to conclusion, I will hand out paper with lines on the bottom
and ask them to draw a picture of a way or time that they have saved water.
5. Conclusion:
.
The conclusion to this lesson plan will be time given to them to draw and
color and write about their saving water experience.
Student Assessment/Evaluation:
For the assessment of this lesson, I will use their pictures as an indicator of whether
they understood the lesson plan.
Assignment:
There will be no assignment.
Unit Evaluation:
I am very proud of my ideas with the river and having my kids do such hands
on activities. I definitely want to save this lesson plan and use it some day, however,
I am slightly worried that this lesson plan has become more of a science plan and
less of a health plan. But, if this is the case, I have thought of ways to include bodily
health. I can talk about how we can pollute our bodies with less healthy foods, or
how our bodies need water, just like the earth does.
When I am teaching this lesson plan, I plan to evaluate myself based on the
student’s reactions. If they are understanding the lesson, I can be confident that it is
a good lesson idea, however, if they are taking a little while to comprehend, I will
want to take my lesson and modify it before the next class period. I will modify it by
either slowing down or explaining more.
Integration/Infusion Plan:
Reading: In our reading class, we could have a unit on environmental health,
and read books on the topic, including air pollution, electricity and renewable
resources, all topics that are related to our health unit, but not covered.
Art: In our art class, we could talk about landscapes, rivers, and our earth,
and draw them in their pristine condition, without litter or air pollution.
Science: In our science class, we could go more indepth about our
environment and more reasons why it is so important to recycle, reduce and
maintain.
References:
Ritz, B., & Wilhelm, M. (2008, October). Air pollution impacts on infants and children.
Retrieved from http://www.environment.ucla.edu/reportcard/article1700.html
Lex, L. (2011). Lil's legacy of litter. (1 ed.). SilverHouse Books.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il1RX6_h9Xc