Student Contributor -H. Hirt
During this project students learn about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, plastic pollution (with an emphasis on plastic shopping bags), The Ocean Clean Up Project, and local recycling options. Students create speeches to share with other classes and collect plastic shopping bags to be recycled. Teacher takes the bags to Walmart to be recycled.
This is a four-lesson project and lessons were delivered once a week. During the first lesson students build background knowledge on The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and plastic shopping bag pollution. They begin exploring the issue and begin planning to take informed action. My students were particularly motivated to collect plastic shopping bags for recycling due to the threat they cause to marine life.
In lesson two the students use handouts and books to recount key details and put together a class speech. The speeches sum up what the students have learned about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and plastic shopping bag pollution, as well as a call for students to bring in plastic shopping bags for the class to recycle.
During lesson three we learn about The Ocean Clean Up project and Boyan Slat. We learn about current efforts to clean up The Great Pacific Garbage patch and recycle the plastic already present in our oceans. On this day the teacher takes the plastic shopping bags that students have brought in to be recycled. The following lesson focuses on how to recycle plastic shopping bags, and where they can and cannot be recycled.
This project was fun and had great buy in from my students. They were really concerned about the impact plastic shopping bag pollution and The Great Garbage Patch have on marine life and the food chain. They were motivated to act and learn. They had lots of questions and thoughts to share.
One thing that did not go as planned was time. Originally this was supposed to be a three-week unit with weekly lessons. However, it was clear during the first lesson that in order to allow students to become fully invested more time would be needed for class discussions. Therefore an additional 45 minute period was added (this ended up being our speech day).
Be aware of the local limitations for recycling plastic shopping bags. The plan was to take them to a local facility and speak with someone that worked there. However, local recycling centers are unable to accept plastic shopping bags. Instead we found that chains such as Walmart will accept and recycle the bags.
