This lesson is for : Grade 6:
Summary
Pollution is a consistent problem that contributes to our health. It is important we teach the students, who are our future, what options they have in order to decrease or eliminate pollution problems. This project will allow students a hands on opportunity to research, explore, and think critically about their ideas of what they can do to help pollution.
TIPC Ratings
Research & Information Fluency
Rating: Ideal – Explanation: After students activated their background information on pollution, they chose a specific type of pollution to focus on and created a goal to help reduce the pollution. From their knowledge, they developed four open ended questions on their pollution, and researched the answers. They wrote their questions, answers, and citation for their website into a google doc within their group website. Teachers monitored and assessed the quality of the questions being asked and the answers collected by each group. In the middle of the project, student groups were given questions to reflect on the information they had researched as a reflection and checkpoint. Towards the end of the project, the students had to research information to provided questions on how their pollution connected to the health and population of humans. Teachers reviewed over questions and guided the students to help them make their answers specific to their topic.
Communication & Collaboration
Rating: Approaching – Explanation: Students were split into groups of three to four students for this pollution project. Over a period time, they were given a variety of tasks in order to learn about the pollution of their choice. Collaboratively, they created a goal that they would work on outside of the classroom and ways to accomplish this goal. As a group, they researched questions that they created. Throughout the project, students reflected on their progress as a group by reporting three times their groups’ successes and improvements needed to be made to achieve their goal. Students delegated and split the work among each other. All information and research was recorded on their group’s website.
Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
Rating: Ideal – Explanation: Students utilized a group website as a tool to collect information and think critically about that information. After collecting research on a pollution topic, each group had to reflect on the information they obtained by answering questions that allowed them to comprehend the dangers of pollution. The groups were asked to think of new information they wanted to learn and to create four questions to research. As a result of their research, they had to create a goal that they could implement outside of the classroom to reduce their pollution. They also had to include three ways to be successful in accomplishing their goal. As they practiced their goal at home, they evaluated their progress through three different reports in the Journal Tab. Within the reports, the group discussed what they had done to get closer at achieving their goal and what they needed to improve on. Towards the end of the project, they had to connect their pollution to personal health, re-evaluate their goal, discuss if their goal would reduce the pollution, and predict what would happen in 2046 if pollution kept growing. At the end of their project, they conferred with their group to reflect on the project. Their reflection included: a synopsis of their goal, any changes that could have been made to their goal, and how the project affected their thoughts on pollution. The students also commented on whether or not they would continue to stop pollution after the project.
Creativity & Innovation
Rating: Not observed – Explanation: This was not a focus of the project
Student Artifact
Lesson Materials
