Author: TCR Staff

Lesson Plans

Earth Day Activities

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A little background…

Earth Day was first held in the United States on April 22, 1970, and was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson. The second Earth Day, held on April 22, 1990, was celebrated in over 140 countries. Earth Day is a day to remind us of the need to care for our environment.

Another related holiday held nationally in the United States on the last Friday of April is Arbor Day, a day to plant new trees and emphasize conservation. It was first held in Nebraska on April 10, 1872, and its founder was conservation advocate Julius Sterling Morton. The date for Arbor Day may vary depending on the state in which you live.

Earth Day Activities

Start a school-wide recycling program. Collect aluminum cans, plastic bottles, paper, and glass. Put collection points around the school. If possible, have a curbside drop-off point one day a week so the public can support your efforts. Recruit some adults to help with transportation to a recycling center. This may be coordinated by your class or by your school’s student government. Decide on a worthwhile organization that helps the earth and contribute the money you earn to it.

Create a bulletin board entitled “Our Dreams for Our Environment.” Divide the board into halves labeled “good dreams” and “bad dreams.” On the good side, put paintings or drawings which represent a clean, safe environment. On the bad side, put illustrations to represent what will happen to the environment if we don’t take better care of the earth.

Another idea for a bulletin board… Use the classified section of the newspaper as the background for this bulletin board. Title the board “The Daily Planet.” Throughout the unit, have students bring in and post articles from newspapers or magazines that tell about environmental problems that the world is facing.

More bulletin board ideas… If you don’t have time to create a bulletin board yourself, check out the Green Earth Bulletin Board from Susan Winget.

Discuss how the air can be cleaned up.

Have students design a mode of transportation that would not pollute the air.

Make a class weather station, including a wind sock, wind vane, anemometer, and rain gauge. Students can make instruments individually or in teams. Then hold an Air, Wind, and Weather Open House to share the products of the unit. Invite the school principal, parents, another class, and/or others.

Have your students design posters for Earth Day. They can be displayed in the classroom, in the library, throughout the school, and in the community.

Hold an Earth Day bookmark contest. Have your class make up the contest rules and forms. Select a winner from each grade level. Duplicate the bookmarks of the winners and distribute them to the students at your school. See if your public library will duplicate and distribute them, too.

Set up an art center where students create art work from recyclable material including anything that they can use in a way different from the way it was originally used. This might include old buttons, fabric scraps, or lace trim as well as more typical “trash.”

Make seed pictures. Draw simple shapes onto small pieces of colored tagboard. Glue a variety of seeds onto the shapes.

Create fruit and vegetable mobiles. Have students identify a grouping (e.g., vegetables that are seeds or fruits with pits) and draw, color, and cut out representative examples. Attach these to the bottoms of coat hangers with string or yarn. Mount the title from the top of the hanger.

Learn about careers related to plants. Be sure to include nursery workers, landscape architects, gardeners, farmers, horticulturists, arborists, and botanists. Have students interview nursery workers or research the occupations and present their findings to the class. Invite some of these workers to school as guest speakers or take field trips to visit places of work.

Assess students’ knowledge of environmental issues by completing a word web using the word “pollution” or “environment.” Discuss the different types of pollution that exist in the world, especially any problems that are prevalent in your own community.

Students can write letters to city officials, senators, representatives, and even the president, urging them to pass laws which protect the environment. Have them include some of their concerns and ideas for possible solutions.

Hand out awards to students who demonstrate good knowledge and practice of environmental sustainability. Click here to print out a sample SAVE OUR EARTH AWARD.

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Behavior Management

Need Your Students Quiet and On-Task? Try Secret Workers.

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Need a new strategy to get your students to stay quiet and focus on their work? Try Secret Workers. Secretly pick two people and write their names down. Announce to the class that the teacher has picked two Secret Workers. If the two Secret Workers are quiet, follow the directions, and stay on task, they will earn a reward for the entire class. If the two do not behave properly, the class will not receive the reward. Since no one knows who the Secret Workers are, everyone is forced to behave as the teacher has asked. This behavior system works well for shorter lengths of time—about half-hour to 40-minute time frames.

Rewards can be anything the teacher chooses, such as five extra minutes of recess, free time, stickers, etc. Extra recess is a logical reward. The teacher can always say, “Since you used the class time so well and stayed on task, we will have extra time to get in more recess.” Or the teacher might say, “Since you have worked so hard, you have earned an extra five minutes of break time.”

There can be variations to the Secret Workers. One variation is to tell the class that the teacher will be picking one boy and one girl. Another variation is to divide the class in half, and tell the class that one person will be picked from the left side of the room and one from the right side. After using this technique several times, the teacher can then have a competition between the two groups.

Tips: If the Secret Workers are successful, be sure to announce their names and have the class thank them. If the Secret Workers are unsuccessful, talk to them personally and do not reveal the names to the class.

It is a good idea to announce aloud how the Secret Workers are doing. For example, a teacher might say, “Wow, the Secret Workers are doing really well” or “Uh-oh, our Secret Workers need to be careful.”

Behavior Management

Students Forgetting Their Homework? Try This Behavior Reflection Approach

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If a student forgets his or her homework, a teacher may have the student stay in at recess or during study hall, do the missing work, and fill out a behavior reflection form. This form is designed to have students think about what they did, why it was inappropriate, and how to avoid this behavior next time. They need to answer in complete sentences and thoughtfully. This form is then taken home that evening, signed by the student’s parents, and brought back to school the next day. It is a great way to keep parents informed of late work and a great way to keep the student on track of his or her responsibilities.

This form is only effective for those students who forget occasionally. For the repeat offender, other measures will have to be taken to better help him or her remember. Also, the reflection form is general enough that it can also be used for other situations, such as a social problem that occurred that day in school. Filling out a sample reflection form together, as a whole class, would be a good way to model what is expected of the students.

If the teacher does not have a study hall, consider getting some teachers in the same grade level to give up one lunch period to sit for study hall. Study hall duty would be on a rotating basis. The more teachers involved, the fewer lunches missed per teacher. If this is not possible, the student should stay in from recess to fill out the reflection form and do the missing work.

Tip: The teacher may want to have a spot on a bulletin board or whiteboard for those students who are to go to study hall that day. This will also serve as a reminder to the teacher and the students that they have a reflection form that needs to be signed. It is recommended that student numbers rather than names are used on this board to avoid embarrassment.

Teaching Tips

After-Work Reflection in the Classroom

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When students spend time doing a project either alone or with a group, often one important element of their learning is left out. That element is reflection. Reflecting on what has been done is a major part of learning. Here is a reflection sheet designed to not only help the student remember what he or she did, but also to help the student understand how the current experience will help him or her.

Click here for reflection sheet

These questions are designed in a way that there is no correct answer. They are open-ended to fit each individual’s own experiences.

If the reflection is done in the same manner and for every project, it may become monotonous to the students. Remember to have students reflect on only those activities the teacher feels need reflection. In addition, have students reflect in a variety of ways. Using the same questions, students can write their answers, whisper their thoughts to a partner, or share their thoughts with the class by going around in a circle.

Tip: Hang up a poster with the questions for easy referral. Students can then use the questions to foster a quick class discussion.