TITLE: Destination Conservation

"Using wisely today for an improved tomorrow"

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  • 1, 2, 3
  • The lessons lend themselves to being taught in 45-60 minutes sessions.
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Students will demonstrate understanding through the preparation and planning of a project specific to each of the mini units, Waste, Energy and Water.

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  1. The entire unit would be taught by one primary level teacher. Due to the wide range of activities and concepts involved in a unit on conservation, it would be a good idea to split it up into three mini-units:

    These 2-3 week mini-units would be taught in the fall, winter and spring respectively.

    NOTE TO TEACHER: The entire Primary Level Destination Conservation unit has been written under the assumption that approach #1 will be used.

  2. The unit may be taught to the entire division. WASTE could be taught in late grade 1, ENERGY in late grade 2, and WATER in grade 3. If this approach is used, the mini-units could be expanded to 3-4 weeks each.

Language, Mathematics, Science and Technology

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****
Waste: garbage, refuse, landfill, dump, toxic, pollution, litter, trash, recycle, compost, oil spill, renewable/non-renewable resources, conservation, audit, observe, appreciate harm, wildlife, game, biodegradable, plastic, action, responsibility, lifestyle, sort, classify, problem solving, cooperation, volume, mass, design, drama, mural
Energy: electricity, joules, hydro, geothermal, natural gas, nuclear fission, gasoline, mechanical, chemical, solar, drama, verbal reports, create puppets, efficient, role play, interview, lifestyle, audit, heating, draft-proofing, insulation, weather-stripping, lighting, drama, journal
Water: lake, river, pond, wetland, filtration, conservation, experiments, pollutants, aquatic plants, ecosystem, habitats, seaweed, algae, classification, discussion, reporting, groups work, identification, swamps, bogs, lagoons, freshwater, journal, acid rain, discussion, groundwater, water cycle, precipitation, audit ****

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Rationale

It is important to remember that primary students have limited experience or understanding of things outside their home or school environment. The objective of Primary Level teachers should be to introduce the students to the basic concepts of "What is Waste?", "What is Energy?", and "What is Water?". They must have an opportunity to explore these concepts before attempting to tackle the concept of conservation and how it relates to these three areas. Since the teacher has the luxury of spreading the unit over the year, it is possible to advance from basic concepts and skills in the fall to increasingly more advanced concepts and skills by the end of the year.

Approach to Units

Each unit may be laid out in the following manner:

Introduction:
Spend two to three days on a brainstorming activity, free play activities and then more directed exploratory activities.

Specific Activities:
Several days may be spent on activities that enable the students to progress from the concept of "What is Waste?", for example, to conservation of waste. This is the time to include directed games, audits, field trips, guest speakers and community service.

Culminating Activity:
Several days may be spent on preparing and presenting a "project" which demonstrates student understanding and enables teacher evaluation. Some choice should be provided to the children as to the nature of their presentation, but a suggested approach is to progress through the Multiple Intelligences Areas from fall to spring. These activities will be discussed further under the Specific Learning Activities section but, in general, the students would select from a pool of visual presentation ideas in the fall, verbal presentation ideas in the winter, and written presentation ideas in the spring.

Groupings:

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Print

Video

Other

Internet

WWW resources may be used for a variety of purposes:

  1. teacher background information;
  2. downloading text, images, sounds and animations for creating student materials;
  3. printed as "hard copy" student resources;
  4. older students can be taught to find/block/copy/paste text and download images/sounds/animations for research/presentation purposes;
  5. students may test hypotheses and discover concepts in an interactive environment;
  6. younger students will need to work with an older student, parent helper, teacher-librarian or resource teacher;
  7. all students should be instructed in safe and responsible use of the Internet.

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  1. Teacher Observation/Anecdotal Records during group work and game activities
  2. Conferencing while students complete audits and prepare culminating projects
  3. Self and Peer Evaluation of student culminating activity projects
  4. Work Samples (audits, art work, written work)
  5. Questioning by teacher and classmates during presentation of culminating activities

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Level 1

Level 2
Level 3
Level 4

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Student-student communication:

Student-teacher communication:

Home-school communication:

Teacher - teacher communication:

Teacher - community communication:

Doug Gibbons, Paul Hannan, Ken Lansing, (Simcoe County Board of Education), Tescor

This lessonware was prepared for ©ScbePack by Destination Conservation and The Simcoe County District School Board. For further information on the 200 outcomes based curriculum units available in ScbePack lessonware contact:

Bonnie Carter
bcarter@edctr.scbe.on.ca, 1-705-734-6363 ext. 270