5.ESS3.1: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use…

Earth Day Investigations: Make Your School Better Grades 4–6 · partly supports this outcome

Four hands-on investigations into the school's own garbage, shade, water and electricity. Each one ends with students taking a real, evidence-based recommendation to the principal or caretaker.

• What's in our garbage? 50–60 min

  Teams wear gloves to sort one day of classroom waste into landfill, recycling and compost, weigh each pile and graph the results. They use the numbers to recommend one change to the principal or caretaker.

• Where would a new tree help most? 50–60 min

  Teams measure air and ground temperature in sun and shade, on grass and on pavement, to see how much shade cools the schoolyard. They use their numbers to recommend where the school should plant a new tree.

• How much water does a dripping tap waste? 45–60 min

  The class counts drips per minute from a slow-dripping tap, catches and measures the water, then scales it up to a day and a year. Students use the math to recommend how the school should report and fix drips.

• Is our classroom wasting electricity? 45–60 min

  Students audit their classroom's lights and devices, check which are left on when nobody needs them, and read wattage labels to estimate the energy wasted in a school year. They finish with a poster or letter recommending one easy change.

Our Changing Planet: Resources and Human Impact Grades 5–8

Where the copper, cobalt, lithium, oil and sand in a phone come from and why, which energy sources refill and which do not, what real population and energy data say about people and resources, and how real towns cut their waste. Four no-materials lessons built on printed data cards, with a hopeful, evidence-first tone for Earth Day or any time.

• How can a town use less and waste less? 50–60 min

  Teams act as a town council with a waste problem. They rotate around four stations describing what real places did, from Ljubljana's food-waste collection to Kamikatsu's 45 sorting bins, score each against criteria and constraints, and design a plan with a way to measure whether it works.

Printable practice for 5.ESS3.1

• Earth Day Investigations: Make Your School Better workbook included with the unit

  4 English-support pages, 4 practice pages, 4 readings, 1 word wall, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

• Our Changing Planet: Resources and Human Impact workbook included with the unit

  1 word wall, 1 English-support page, 1 practice page, 1 reading, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

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