Building a Greener Community
Created By:
Violet Harada
Title/Role:
Professor
Organization/School Name:
University of Hawaii
Location:
Hawaii
Grade Level:
8 Type of Lesson:
Lesson in a unit Type of Schedule:
Combination Collaboration Continuum:
Intensive Content Area:
Science, Social studies Content Topic:
Eco-friendly communities, civic action Scenario:
Students plan to participate in a community-sponsored fair focusing on the sustainable future of the community. The LMS and teacher collaborate on this project as students investigate how to create a sustainable community. Students explore strategies to maintain a healthy and eco-friendly environment. They conduct their investigation in teams focusing on different aspects of community life and how to use existing resources more efficiently. Their tasks include: collecting information from diverse and current sources, and devising methods to communicate their findings. Researched topics include: saving energy in our homes, reducing and recycling waste in our community, growing and eating local foods, adopting transportation that is less dependent on fossil fuel, and creating a greener school. While the teacher monitors the daily progress of the teams in meeting deadlines for this project, the LMS focuses on helping students with locating and using resources. She also assists the students in communicating their findings using tech tools to produce infographic displays. Overview:
Students delve into different areas of community life and the importance of using existing resources in effective and efficient ways. They also consider alternatives to creating greener environments that may be innovative approaches. In their investigations, they address the following essential questions: What does greening a community involve? How green is our community at this time? How can we build a greener community? Final Product:
Students communicate their findings and recommendations using the medium of information graphics (aka infographics). The infographics will be displayed in a special Green Day celebration at the local shopping mall. Note: Infographics is a way of presenting information using visuals, graphs, and text. Library Lesson:
At this point in the unit, students in grade eight have collected information and are ready to create pieces that eventually become part of the inforgraphic displays. This particular lesson introduces different types of graphs and their possible uses. The students will use collected data to prepare graphical displays that represent and interpret the information.
NOTE: Although this specific lesson has not been taught, variations of it have been taught at several middle and high schools in Hawaii. Estimated Lesson Time:
60 minutes Have you taught this lesson before:
No Strategies for differentiation:
The teacher and LMS allow students in a team to help one another on the graphs. They also provide informational resources at different reading levels to accommodate the range of students in the class. In addition, they encourage students to do pair-reading where a more able reader can assist a struggling reader in interpreting and summarizing textual material.