After completing our Social Justice project I wanted to share my thoughts and ideas on the process. My first graders decided to study what they considered an issue at our school, and that issue was the large amounts of trash on campus. Through observation they concluded that large amounts of trash were left after recess and lunch. After gathering the trash they had found they took it a step further and analyzed it. What they found was that most trash they collected consisted of water bottles. We learned that water bottles were made of plastic and that by throwing in the trash we were only helping fill our landfills. As we continued to learn more about plastic we realized the best place for plastic items like water bottles were in the recycling bin. Before the lesson proceeded any further I showed them a clip from youtube video about "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch". I forewarned them about what they might see. I have provide the link for the video so that you can view it for yourself. The video is approximately 6 minutes long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLrVCI4N67M
After viewing the video students expressed that they felt, sad, angry, mad and upset. When I talked to them about how they were feeling I proposed a question, "What do you think we can do as first graders?" There overwhelming responses were; make posters and post them around school and recycle our bottles. So we began to make posters and to get the word out to others in our school. We are currently collecting money to purchase recycling bins and extra trash cans. Our future goal is to have recycling bins for each class and expand awareness to our parish community by creating newsletters, posters and fact sheet inserts for our parish bulletin. Each day my first graders are helping to reduce the amount of plastic thrown away. If first graders can do it so can you!
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