Down in the Dirt

Hello again! After writing that last post, I couldn’t help thinking that environmental awareness is something we should always be reminding our students about – it’s shouldn’t just be a one-and-done deal. At a time when it is critical for our society to be conserving energy, water, and food, it doesn’t make sense to just teach it all in one unit and then move on. Instead, we should be teaching it all year long. As such, I got my inspiration for this post from our very own professor!

One area where I see a lot of waste, especially with children, is with food. I worked at a summer camp where, every meal, we gathered up all of the camper’s scraps and weighed their food. The children were shocked that they’d wasted so much food, and we made it a challenge to see which table could have the least food waste. But here’s the irony – after every meal, all of the weighed scraps were thrown right into the trash! So, while we were increasing awareness, we weren’t really taking any action on the problem.

To solve this, I thought back to one idea our professor shared at the beginning of the semester: a classroom compost! With me being a person who’s never done a compost, I found a guide to creating and maintaining one, and it even has lessons for students from K to 12. Not only does it outline exactly how to maintain different types of composts, it connects the compost to environmental facts and includes ways in which students can teach their community about composting. You can check out the entire PDF at your leisure, but here’s a sneak peek of one of the lessons included:

http://www.cvswmd.org/uploads/6/1/2/6/6126179/do_the_rot_thing_cvswmd1.pdf

At this point in the year, students are experts at composting and are ready to share their knowledge with the community.

Project A: Compost Presentation

•          Students create a master list of information needed to teach a community member how to compost.
•          Thinking of this information, students will decide how they want to present it to the community (Workshop? Demonstration?)
•          Students plan out their workshop/demonstration and present it at parent night, to another classroom, or at an assembly.

Project B: Compost Pamphlet

•          Like Project A, students create a master list of information needed to teach a community member how to compost.
•          Students can create a pamphlet encouraging others to compost, writing out how to compost as well as why it’s important.
•         Other options: Students can create a children’s book about composting, write a letter to a friend or relative, or create pictures with compost slogans.

Project C: Publicity

•          Students think up a message they want to display to the public about composting.
•         Students design ways to advertise this message to the community – get creative! This can be newspaper announcements, flyers, PSA’s on radio stations, etc.

Project D: Marketing

•          Again, students think up a message they want to convey to the public, but this message will be skewed more towards advertising.
•         Students brainstorm their own product that relates to composting as well as ways they will get the community to “buy” it.
•          Make actual advertisements! Have students paint their ads on milk cartons, T-shirts, greeting cards, etc.

You can pick or choose which projects to do, but the most important thing is that students are bringing their knowledge of composting to the community! Of course, the PDF also includes helpful how-to’s when building a compost (especially for people like me who don’t know what they’re doing), but the key to using them in the classroom is to always spark those discussions about environmental awareness. This is just one fun activity that teachers can use throughout the year to remind students about the environment – if you have any other suggestions/ideas I’d love to hear them! On that note, I’ll see you next time!