Slide outline for Lesson 4.5. Nine slides, one day; the quiz takes the last fifteen minutes and needs no slides after slide 8. [Sal: slide 4 needs your town's real recycling rules.]
Green Choices
- Lesson 4.5
- Today: where everything goes, what makes a room green, one room fixed
- Then: the Home Safety and Conservation Quiz, fifteen minutes, starts at minute 23
Teacher notes
Image: a glass jar full of pencils next to a cardboard box labeled "winter."
Do now
- List everything you threw away yesterday that you remember
- Star anything that could have been reused or recycled
- Two minutes
Teacher notes
Hand vote: who starred at least half. Hook with the T-shirt and the working charger: which is trash? Neither.
The four Rs, in order
- Reduce: do not bring it in
- Reuse: give it a second job
- Recycle: by the local rules, so it becomes something new
- Compost ("rot"): food scraps and yard waste become soil
- The order matters. Reduce does the least harm. Recycling still costs energy.
Teacher notes
Image: four bins in a row with an arrow getting smaller from left to right.
The local rules
- [Sal: your town's recycling rules, one slide: what goes in, what does not, which plastics]
- Greasy pizza box: not recycling
- Plastic bags: not the curbside bin (store drop-off)
Teacher notes
Students argue about plastic numbers. Let the town's page settle it.
Five green factors in a room
- Natural light: fewer lamps, better mood
- Materials: wood, cotton, wool, secondhand, durable, repairable; not fast furniture
- Indoor air: low-VOC paint, no aerosols, a window that opens, a plant
- Water: fix leaks, low-flow, shorter showers
- Waste: the four Rs
Teacher notes
Image: a bright bedroom with a wood desk by the window and a plant on the sill.
Students fill Part 1.
Sort the twelve
- A glass jar, a cardboard box, a banana peel, a plastic bag
- A T-shirt with a hole, a working charger, a chipped mug, junk mail
- A greasy pizza box, a wobbly chair, a plastic water bottle, coffee grounds
- Point to the bin. One student says why.
Teacher notes
Hold up each item. The pizza box and the chair are the arguments worth having.
The Greener Room Swap
- Pairs. Read the teen bedroom in Part 3.
- Eight things are wrong. For each: the greener swap, the factor it improves, free or cheap or money
- Ten minutes
- Then your top three: most good for the least money
Teacher notes
Watch for "buy a new green one" answers. Ask what could fix it for free.
Free first
- Free: open the window, turn off the fan, fix the leg, donate the clothes, tell the landlord
- Cheap: a secondhand desk or shelf, a plant
- Money: almost nothing in this room needs it
- The greenest choice is usually the cheapest one
Teacher notes
Take two pairs' top three. Then hand out the quiz.
Home Safety and Conservation Quiz
- Fifteen minutes on the timer
- Calculator allowed. Nothing else.
- Twelve items: hazards, detectors, the plan, a breaker, a drain, two math items, the four Rs
- When you finish: one line on the back, "one thing in my room I will reuse instead of throwing out"
Teacher notes
Read the directions once. Collect at the timer. Grade before Lesson 4.6.