Every Day is Earth Day: Recycling Decision-making

In this post, we will share some activities and lessons you can use in your classroom to teach students about recycling, which is undergoing many changes. This is a great way to engage your students in making responsible decisions.

Activity 1: Asking questions about recycling
Before viewing: Ask students the following questions:
What do you see? What do you think is happening? What questions do you have? Record all of the student questions.
During viewing: Tell to do a quick draw/quick write as they take notes about things they learn about recycling.

After viewing: ​Students discuss what they learned. Then, they try to answer some of the focus questions. Use the rest of the focus questions to inspire students to conduct research and bring answers back to the classroom. You can use information from your local county's recycling information page to help your students learn more: Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, or Sarasota

Activity 2: Decisionomics lesson: Where do we place the recycling bins?
This Recycling Bins decision-making lesson involves students "working" as consultants for a movie theater, who receive a proposal to make a decision about the best place to locate new recycling bins.  You can download the lesson

We have also adapted the lesson into a Nearpod activity, which hits Florida science standards in 1-3, but can be adapted to other grade levels for ELA and Social Studies. Use the preview link like a slide show or you can download the activity to your Nearpod account using the editable link .