Jen Temkin’s class read a folktale, discussed how the tribe, and we, respect each other, animals and their habitats. They did a writing assignment about this.
Mike Beinert’s class had a weekend assignment of “doing good things” for the earth and shared what they did. Then they explored the history of Earth Day via the Internet; children found interesting facts on Google safe search and shared those facts. One student wrote an Earth Day song that was shared and they all stood by the open windows and sang Happy Earth Day.” He reported that many of his students found the facts about recycling alarming and even discussed the book Silent Spring, which began the Earth Day movement.
Sue Margolies’ class watched videos from Scholastic News. They did a whole class reading lesson using the Scholastic News which used Earth Day as the theme; they played an interactive game about the environment on the SmartBoard and after much discussion and immersion about how we can keep our earth clean, the children were given a mini homework assignment to choose an activity that could help save the planet, i.e., recycling plastics, turning off running faucets, picking up trash outside).
She reported that the children gasped when, during the video, they saw someone in a car toss out of bag of garbage onto a highway.
Linda Lippolt’s class watched a Scholastic video about recycling. They read the issue Trash, played a SmartBoard game about recycling, made books using vocabulary words associated with Earth Day and Linda provided each child with an award for recycling their water bottles in class.
Jodi Wilgard’s class read their Weekly Reader about Earth Day. She read them a story in the afternoon called Michael Recycle, brainstormed ways to protect the environment, and the children completed a worksheet listing ways to protect the environment and to Go Green.
