Lesson 4 - Plastic Project

(4) R - Plastic project

Description/Theme:

Students will learn about plastic pollution and how it can negatively affect our environment, specifically the oceans. Then, students will create a fish of their own design out of plastic materials.

Objectives:

- Learn about marine ecosystems and ocean health

- Learn about the harmful effects of plastics, specifically on marine environments

- Develop problem solving skills and creativity

Procedure:

Students will make a fish of their own design out of the plastic materials available to them.

Materials:

- Plastics: Bottles, bins, lids, any reusable plastic objects available

Reflection:

With the students we discussed the importance of the 3R's, reduce, reuse, and recycle. Randy gave a presentation on plastics and the pacific garbage patch and how it affects our world and animals within our world. The students seemed to really be engaged in how to help solve the problem of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch. They really felt for alot of the animal photos Randy showed in the presentation. After the presentation the students created animals and fish out of plastic products. Some of the students really came up with some creative ideas. The different materials really allowed them to explore and really be creative with their project. Overall, we did a lot better at time management this lesson. We had enough time to recap the lesson, clean-up, and to hand out their last project to take home. One of the great things that we did was to allow the students to show their projects and share with the class why and how they made them at the end of class.

Now looking back:

I feel that we could have had better application/ adhesive materials for the kids other than just hot glue and wire. I also feel like we could have had some more examples to show them so they had more options of things to make, since some of them had trouble being creative. Overall, I thought this class we pretty well, but when using this many materials and giving the students a lot of options of things to use the kids tend to go a bit crazy about grabbing things before they are suppose to. It would help if we had some way of keeping things equal or keeping them from grabbing things so quickly off the table.