Field Day 3 Reduce, Reuse, Recylce!

Today’s science lesson was on recycling! To begin the lesson, my CT activated the student’s prior knowledge by discussing sorting which they talked about yesterday. They discussed that you can sort by color, shape, size, feel and taste. This lead to a discussion about how it is necessary to be able to sort so in order to recycle. My CT had a garbage can, a recycling bin and a recycling container for paper only for the students to see. She explained what goes in each of the different containers and why. She brought to their attention the symbol with three arrows that represents something that can be recycled. My CT told the students that they should always look for this symbol before they throw empty containers or bottles away in the garbage. She passed different bottles around and the students got to find the symbol on them so that they would know what to look for at home. My CT related this lesson to their daily lives by reminding them to always look for the symbol before throwing a container away at home. She had containers that the students would recognize such as milk cartons and apple juice containers. A few days ago they watched a Magic School Bus episode about recycling. The students saw how plastic can be melted down to make plastic capsules and how paper can be recycled so that less trees have to be cut down. My CT explained to students that they should recycle newspaper in the recycling bin, and paper in the recycle box for paper only. She pointed out that although these are separate bins, they both have the recycle symbol on it. She also gave the example of how the students often do activities in class which reuses the newspaper. Again, she was relating recycling to their daily lives so that the students could see the importance of it and how it is relevant to them. She concluded the lesson by reading the book Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
The students seemed to drift off a bit during this lesson, and I think this is because there were no hands on activity for them to do. They did seem to enjoy the book, and they were interested when the containers were being passed around, but I feel like they were more interested in last week’s science lesson when they were able to participate more actively. I think this lesson was done in a way that really showed the students how reduce, reuse, recycle can be applied to their lives which is really good because I think this sort of thing gets them interested in science!